unconquered
by stitchedmoon
Summary: Post-XSIII. In order to defend his new family and the world they've spent the last two years rebuilding, Ziggy may have to relive his nightmares again.
1. 01

**notes**

I wrote this story between August and December of 2009. It's a rewrite of a shorter story I wrote in 2008, and yes, I realize it's not a very original concept.

In the most obvious sense, this is a work of fiction based on another work of fiction, i.e. the Xenosaga series of role-playing games created by Monolith. I don't own Xenosaga and I'm not associated with anyone who does. The premise for this story is heavily based on supplemental material for the aforementioned series, including the in-game database and the Perfect Guide, as well as a few other documents. I'm also greatly indebted to my friends on the Godsibb forums for the many discussions that influenced this story, and for answering my stupidly obvious questions when I was too lazy to look things up.

In another sense, which will probably become very obvious to anyone familiar at all with the kinds of popular culture I've been immersed in lately, most of the ideas in this story that aren't directly swiped from Xenosaga are borrowed from something else, either accidentally or accidentally-on-purpose. Just about every science fiction story I've had exposure to in the last 24 years has found its way into this fanfic in some sort of chopped-up, regurgitated form. I won't list them all here, but you can probably play Guess Where I Got That From with almost every scene in the fic. Actually, you could probably make a drinking game out of it.

There's also a fair amount of sophomoric Jungian butchery and mangled Biblical references in this fanfic. I'm certainly no expert on either one, and my lack of knowledge is probably laughably apparent to anyone with more than half an education, but I found the in-game use of some of these concepts interesting enough that I wanted to deal with them in my fic as well, even at risk of making myself look like a pretentious idiot. The title "Unconquered" is a reference to William Ernest Henley's poem _Invictus_.

And also, yes, I realize that a lot of the ideas and scenes in this fic have been addressed in other and better works of fan fiction, especially 100-series' _Maybe Tomorrow_. I hadn't read much of 100-series' excellent story when I originally started writing mine, and the similarities between the two were not intended. I was, however, directly influenced by several other writers, including EK (issachar-san), Ekplixi/Suramira, Princess Artemis, Rin (missheartilly), TheShoelessOne, and many others. I apologize if I've done anything to offend anyone, or crossed a line by plagiarizing too much from someone else's ideas. It wasn't my intention to copy or offend anyone.

This fic is rated T for violence, disturbing scenes, and moderate romantic behavior (yeah, I went there). It also contains religious themes which may be objectionable to some readers. They don't necessarily reflect my own opinions.

Any errors I've committed, canonical or otherwise, are of course entirely my own fault.

* * *

**01**

The world had aged a hundred years in an instant, the walls of the cathedral around her caving deeper into ruin, the sharp white light at the windows dimming to gray as if even the sky had grown ancient.

He had changed too, in ways she didn't understand, and he was looking through her, past her, into the empty space beyond.

She tried to call out and found she had no voice. She could hear the words in her mind, but they made no sound, left no echoes to diminish in the silence of the walls. Still it didn't stop her from trying to reach him. _Jan, why can't you hear me? Why won't you look at me? What's happened to us?_

"Mom, what's going on?" Her son tugged at her arm, and she looked down. At least he appeared substantial enough, and she could hear his voice, although it had the same echoless quality as her own. "Is that Dad? Why does he look so different?"

"Shhh, Joaquin, I don't know." She turned back to Jan and for the first time noticed the others with him, people she had never seen before. Where had they come from? She couldn't remember why she was here, although it seemed she had been certain of her intentions only moments ago. Or had it been longer? A part of her felt as though it had never left this place, but she had memories, vague and dreamlike, of returning here after spending a long time elsewhere.

_What have we done? Do you remember? Tell me ...._

For a moment she thought he heard her this time, because he raised his head and stared straight at her, into her eyes. But when he spoke it wasn't to her, and when he turned and began to walk away she realized he hadn't been looking at her either.

"Let him go," said a voice behind her, accompanied by the faint warm feathery sensation of something brushing her shoulder. "You have to let go of this place." She didn't recognize the voice, but it sounded familiar and reassuring, like that of a friend she had known for years, or forever. Almost without thinking, she reached down to take Joaquin's hand. The light had begun to fade so rapidly that when she looked back one last time towards the place where Jan had gone, she saw only darkness.

* * *

_T. C. 4770_

Captain Lapis Roman hadn't taken a vacation in the last three years.

At first she thought she had her work cut out for her when she was monitoring the U-TIC Organization from her vantage point within the military, but after the UMN collapsed two years ago and the Federation Government dissolved and the remnants of U-TIC and Ormus and the Immigrant Fleet scattered like mercury droplets into every forsaken corner of the star cluster, Roman had found herself taking on more responsibilities than she would ever have thought herself capable of handling under less urgent circumstances.

Even after the government reconvened and a semblance of the former order was restored, her job hadn't become any easier; if anything, it had become more complicated. That it hardly seemed remarkable anymore said much of her ability to adapt. One crisis bled into the next until they all blurred into a constant state of emergency, and constant emergency became routine, and routine became a way of life, so that now she could glide with ease from one critical situation to the next. Most of the time.

Today was going to be more difficult. She could tell as soon as she reported to the Intelligence Bureau headquarters that morning. The air was solid tension, a force field that set her nerves on edge as she entered the room--but she always felt on edge these days, after all the upheavals and reorganizations and re-reorganizations the military and the government had undergone in the last two years, so it only put her on a sharper edge than usual.

"Captain Roman!" Her warrant officer approached before the automatic doors had finished closing and bolting themselves behind her; he barely remembered to salute before he led her down an aisle between rows of monitoring stations, busy with a profusion of lighted screens. "It's a crisis, the peacekeeping fleet in Third Alexandria--"

Roman gritted her teeth, her nerves still reacting with the tension in the air. Monitoring events at the edge of the civilized universe was like patrolling a border that changed constantly, at times daily, with the ebb and flow of political currents within and outside the Federation. It was like trying to keep track of every wave along the shore of a rough sea.

The universe was smaller now, the Federation reduced from five hundred thousand planetary governments to a mere hundred thousand, its total population cut to a fraction in less than a day, and those fortunate enough to survive had an administrative nightmare on their hands. Nearly two years into its construction, the new Axis Mundi Network, developed by Vector in cooperation with Scientia and the government, had yet to provide adequate coverage even to the fraction that remained. More than half the surviving planets in the Federation still lacked access to the network, and it was in such places, as in others where the infrastructure had only lately arrived, that certain ideologies tended to ferment. Command headquarters had remained here in Tessedora through the dissolution and reconstitution of the government, partly out of respect for convention but also out of a need to maintain a military presence on one of the remotest planets in the Federation proper, because the greatest threat came from the outer regions.

Usually, the threat came to still more remote planets like Third Alexandria, a minor autonomous state that had rejoined the Federation a few months ago and was still reeling from two years of civil war--hence the deployment of the peacekeeping forces. Roman could already guess what had happened. "Another hijacking, officer?"

"Yes, ma'am." The officer paled, straightening the collar of his uniform. "And, er ... it looks as though the same group is responsible. Here's what we were able to find out so far." He gestured toward a screen at an unmanned station.

Roman leaned forward to study the report. "We had no intel on this group's activities prior to the attack?"

"Er--no, ma'am, that's just it. They struck without any prior warning, and apparently without coordinating their movements beforehand. At least, we didn't pick up any trace of their communications on the AMN."

"I can see that." She glared at the screen. The organization her team had been monitoring for the last few days appeared no different from the others they had investigated recently, another armed cult rallied around a fervent strain of the Ormus religion. It was one more example of what the remnants of the faith had become after they had been buried underground for a few years, irradiated with provincial superstitions and prejudices and memories of persecution, cloaked in the language of apocalyptic prophecy, and unleashed against a government that, by suppressing them in the first place, had created its own worst enemy. That was Roman's analysis of the situation. Her expertise was in unconventional military tactics, not the finer points of intersection between religion and politics, but she had seen the same conflicts played out, with minor variations, often enough to have a clear if simplified idea of what was going on.

At first the post-Ormus groups--as some analysts in the Federation government and the media referred to them, since they were no longer strictly affiliated with the church proper, if a central religious hierarchy even existed anymore--had posed more of a nuisance than a threat. They were poorly organized, and their ambitions far exceeded both their resources and their capacity to do any real harm. But during the last year and a half they had pulled together into larger and more cohesive units, thriving despite the Federation's increasingly desperate efforts to stamp them out of existence. Somehow they still managed to acquire newer and better equipment to carry out their attacks, in spite of government-imposed restrictions on trade with politically unstable areas.

That didn't surprise her. Even without evidence, Roman would have been convinced there were still Ormus supporters in the government and the military, and in private industry, who would gladly provide the Federation's enemies with all the equipment they needed. What bothered her was the fact that it all seemed to take place unaccounted for, without any transaction records on the AMN--the only evidence was what turned up in the hands of the enemy, and by then it was usually too late to take preemptive action. It was impossible to disrupt supply lines when the lines themselves were invisible.

"Is this all the information we have?" Roman finished scrolling through the few sparse pages of reports, then turned back to the officer, shaking her head. "It isn't much."

"We did receive a broadcast, ma'am. Apparently the Third Alexandria fleet sent a distress call before they were destroyed, although their signal appears to have been hijacked by the enemy as well." He swallowed. "It's a very strange message."

Roman glared at him. "Play it back. I want to hear it."

"Y-yes, ma'am." He reached over and tapped a command into the keypad. A roar of static burst from the station's audio transmitters.

_What the hell is this?_ thought Roman just before the words began, in a faint thin voice that wavered on the edge of dissolution.

"_Then ... one of the ... seven angels ... said to me ... 'Come ... I will show you ... the judgment of the great harlot ... who sits on many waters ....'_"

The voice subsided into static again. _And what the hell was_ that_?_ She felt the tension prickling at the back of her neck, standing her hair on end. "Excuse me for a minute."

Before the officer could stammer another "Yes, ma'am," Roman turned an about-face and strode out to the hallway. She waited until she heard the heavy bolts shoot back into place on the other side of the door, and when she was certain no one else was in earshot, she slipped her AMN phone out of a pocket on her uniform.

A secretary answered. Roman said, "I need to speak with Representative Helmer. Tell him it's Captain Lapis Roman. And it's urgent."


	2. 02

**02**

When he awoke that morning, Ziggy got up and walked out to the living room of their apartment, blinking for a moment before the hyper-responsive sensors in his eyes readjusted to the light. He detected Juli's signal in the courtyard and went outside, and found her seated in the usual place, with her AMN-compatible connection gear and a cup of tea on the table in front of her. She kept him waiting while she finished scrolling through the morning's news feed; then she took a sip from her drink and set it aside, finally glancing up as if having only noticed him just then.

"Oh, good morning, Jan." As always, she gestured for him to take the unoccupied seat across from her, but he never did; instead he looked around at the yard, at the pale green shoots just showing above the damp soil of the garden plots, where MOMO had enlisted his aid in planting flower seeds a few weeks before.

"No, Alby." He spotted the little white dog loitering with suspicious intent around one of MOMO's flower beds, and shot him what he hoped was a menacing look. Alby froze and backed off, tail curled between his legs.

Juli suppressed a laugh, and he looked back to see her covering her mouth with her hand. "I'm sorry, I just think it's funny the way he listens to you. Have you always been good with dogs?"

"I don't know," he said, suddenly anxious to change the subject. "Did you hear from Third Division yet?"

"Hm? Oh--yes, they called just before you got up."

"Is everything all right?"

"They seemed to think so." Juli pulled a nervous smile. "They said she passed all her exams and she's adjusting well, so she'll be coming home today."

"I'm glad to hear it."

She laughed and didn't bother trying to conceal it this time. "I can tell. You were smiling again."

Startled, he relaxed his expression. "Was I?"

"Don't be embarrassed. I like it. It makes you look ...." She hesitated, then shrugged in dismissal. "Anyway, she should be arriving this afternoon, so I've arranged to meet her when she gets off the orbital elevator. I assume you plan on coming too?"

"Of course." They both knew he had no other obligations; acting as a full-time bodyguard to MOMO and Juli was his first priority and his only current assignment. Besides, even if he had other work to do, he would have planned to meet her anyway.

Juli finished her tea and set her connection gear to standby, and they both headed back inside, Alby reappearing from nowhere to dart in ahead of them the instant the doors opened. In the living room, they paused beside the object that had been delivered yesterday, a huge cloth-draped form that took up nearly half the floor and seemed to dominate whatever space it didn't already occupy.

"Do you think she'll like it?" said Juli, running a hand along the cloth.

"It was very thoughtful of you. I'm sure she'll appreciate it."

"Well, I hope so." She stared down at her fingers, arched stiffly against the covering.

He placed his right hand over hers. "Don't worry."

"Easy for you to say." But he felt the tension in her fingers relax beneath his own, and when she raised her head she smiled again in that strange way of hers, half knowing, half naïve. He liked seeing her smile too. She reached up to brush the side of his face with her free hand, and when he bent toward her, she leaned forward and brought her lips to his so lightly they barely touched before she turned away. "Now come on. We both have to get to work."

* * *

The nightmares had lost some of their urgency in the last two years, but at times he still woke up grasping at shadows, blinking away the red from his eyes as the machines that regulated his internal processes slowed his pulse and respiration to normal. But he had no such mechanism to release the tight cold band of dread across his heart or the ache in his throat as he realized it was too late, that even in dreams, he was trying to hold on to something he could never reach.

His family, his colleagues, Lactis ... at least they had to experience their last moments only once. He had relived them more often than he could recall, and no matter how hard he tried to convince himself that the dream would end differently this time, that he would wake up, really wake up for once, and it would all turn out to have been part of a hundred-year-long nightmare that had never actually happened, still the outcome never changed.

_I failed._ Each time he awoke, the words rose like an accusation in his mind, and every time since the first he had forced them back unspoken. Admitting his failure once had been enough, even if his conscience made him relive that moment forever.

But even his conscience seemed to have scaled back its assault lately, or else he was just getting too old and his memories were slipping away more rapidly than before. On Michtam they had returned to him with perfect and terrible clarity, the worst moments from his past life burned into his mind as if by flashes of lightning, but just as suddenly the illumination had gone. He found it strangely comforting, this persistent tendency to forget. The fragmented structure of his memory had always enabled him to evade things he didn't want to recall, and now, perhaps, those fragments that remained would diminish until there was nothing left to remember anyway.

In any case, he didn't have much time left. He felt certain of that now, monitoring his own decline like the half-life of a radioactive substance. There were limits to what modern technology could do to keep a mere human body alive--even one that had been rebuilt and modified as extensively as his own, its lifespan already prolonged for decades beyond its natural end. It had been only three years since he had last undergone life extension, and already the treatment had worn off almost completely. He knew this, too, without requiring facts or numbers to back it up, although the results from his recent lab examinations confirmed as much.

It didn't frighten him, although now he faced the inevitable with regrets he'd never had before. Dying didn't frighten him, but the thought of leaving MOMO and Juli did. Not because he thought they required his protection--they were both more than capable of defending themselves--but they seemed to rely on him for other reasons, just as he had begun to rely on them for reasons of his own. It had been so long since he had to look out for anyone besides himself that he had forgot that feeling, forgot what it meant for his existence to have any value beyond mere usefulness, the worth of an object. If nothing else, at least that knowledge would make the final years of his life worth living.

* * *

In the afternoon they waited in the elevator terminal at the base of the orbital tower. Juli studied the timetable on the wall, then glanced down at the smaller screen of her connection gear. "According to the time of her departure, she should be arriving any minute."

"Then we got here just in time," said Ziggy. He stopped a few steps behind her and set down the package he'd been carrying. "Do you feel nervous?"

She hesitated, turning away from the screen. "Maybe a little. I've seen all the data, but I'm still not sure what to expect. I guess as long as she's happy ...."

Before he could answer, the elevator rumbled down through the shaft, and they both turned around as the heavy outer and inner doors opened in turn. Juli moved a step closer to him, and he held out an arm behind her, not quite touching her, just to reassure her of his support.

The young woman who stepped off the elevator looked about seventeen years old, with a softness about her face that made her seem childlike even now. When she saw Juli and Ziggy standing by the doorway, she gasped and ran toward them.

"Mommy! Ziggy! I missed you so much!" She stopped in front of them and drew herself upright. "Um ... so, what do you think?"

Juli took a deep breath, then gently placed a hand on the younger woman's shoulder. "MOMO, you look beautiful."

MOMO's face brightened. "Do you really think so?"

"Of course."

"Absolutely," said Ziggy. He noticed that she seemed more mature now, but it didn't make her look any less like herself. "I agree with your mother. Are you happy with the result?"

She nodded, then made a face. "I still feel a little funny, though. I guess it just takes some time to get used to."

"The Vector staff told us that was normal," said Juli. "It might be a while before you feel as comfortable in your current body as you did in your former one. And you can always transfer back to your original frame if there are any problems."

"I know. They told me that too. But don't worry, Mommy. I'm getting used to it already." Her new body was the first of its kind, a transgenic prototype developed by Vector Industries, designed for compatibility with the 100-series operating system. MOMO had volunteered for the transfer operation to test the prototype, and the data she collected would contribute to Vector's research, perhaps even influencing the development of a mass-produced version.

But she had her own reasons for participating in the research as well. Nearly seventeen years had passed since MOMO was first activated, and despite her appearance prior to the operation, she was no longer the child she had been. In the last few years, Ziggy had witnessed her transformation from the brave yet timid little girl he had rescued on Pleroma to the modest and confident woman who stood before him now, and he felt privileged to have watched her grow up. In many ways she still seemed much younger than a normal girl her age--she hadn't yet abandoned the habit of referring to Juli as "Mommy," although coming from her, it didn't seem incongruous somehow--but she had knowledge and experience and abilities that exceeded her years. She had been one of the chief architects of the AMN during the first year of its construction, and since then she had taken on an administrative role in the government, a fact some of her co-workers had a difficult time accepting when she still resembled a twelve-year-old girl.

Juli took her hand from MOMO's shoulder and stepped back, leaning into Ziggy's outstretched arm. "We ... Ziggurat and I both knew this was what you'd wanted for a long time--a chance to grow up on the outside, just as you've grown up inside. And we wanted it for you too. We're both very proud of you, MOMO."

"Thank you, Mommy." She clasped her hands together over her heart. "Thank you, both of you. I'm so happy."

A ringtone interrupted their conversation, and Juli frowned at her connection gear. "I'm sorry, MOMO, I need to take this call. Would you two mind waiting for a moment? I'll be right back."

"It's okay," said MOMO. Juli headed back across the walkway towards the entrance, connection gear in hand. When the gate had closed behind her, MOMO turned to Ziggy. "She's been very busy lately, hasn't she?"

"Yes, I'm afraid so." He looked back in the direction Juli had gone, but she had vanished into the crowd beyond the gate. "I'm concerned for her."

MOMO nodded sadly. "Me too. But I know she'll be all right. Mommy can handle anything--she's tough, like me."

"You do seem to come by it honestly," he said. "By the way, I have something for you." He nodded toward the package he had set aside earlier, a metal box about the size of a large suitcase. "You can open it now if you'd like."

Her eyes widened. "Ziggy, you didn't have to ...." But there was no use in trying to conceal her enthusiasm. He rarely gave presents on any occasion and never expected anything from her either; it was just a mutual understanding they had, that they didn't need to exchange any tokens to confirm their affection for each other. He had debated the purchase for a while, but finally decided that a gift of some sort would be appropriate, since it was her seventeenth birthday.

MOMO dragged the package closer and knelt on the floor to open it. The ambient light of the elevator station gleamed on a series of silvery objects inside, the unassembled parts of an ether bow made of a lightweight synthetic material. She looked up at him, speechless.

"Is it all right?" he said. "I wanted to get you the best model, so I did some research. This one is sized a bit differently, so it should be more comfortable to use with your current physical parameters."

MOMO giggled. "You mean it's a grown-up bow. Thank you, Ziggy! I can't wait to practice with it. But ... you really didn't have to get me anything." She closed the lid and stood up, brushing dust off her skirt.

"I know. I want you to be able to protect yourself, in case .... Well, I just want to make sure you're safe."

"Oh." She smiled, but a trace of concern had slipped into her expression. "By the way, how are the flowers we planted? Are they growing yet?"

"They've just started. You can see them when we get home." He picked up the box, and they headed over to one of the benches near the railing and sat down to wait for Juli.

"I can't wait to see them when they bloom," said MOMO, smoothing her skirt over her knees. "Remember last year? When they finally came up, they made me really happy, just like Shion and Febronia said they would."

"I remember." The previous year had been difficult for all of them, and though he hadn't given it much thought at the time, that spring had marked the turning point, the first time since the collapse of the UMN that they'd had a chance to return to their normal lives--even if _normal_ had a different meaning now that the world had changed. It was strange, he thought, the way insignificant details sometimes impressed themselves on his memory more vividly than the grand scope of events. His worst nightmares consisted of nothing more than the recurring image of a child's shoe cast off in a wash of red, and by the same process, a passing glimpse of pink and gold cosmos flowers as he walked by the window had come to represent everything they had hoped for in the past year--everything he had hoped for, and there was a time he had believed himself beyond hope.

"Do they make you happy, too?"

He considered the question. Happiness, like hope, was something he hadn't considered as having any relevance to his own situation until recently--an absence that had existed for so long he wasn't even aware that anything was missing. It had never concerned him before, but now he wondered. "If they make you happy," he said, "then I'm glad."

MOMO peered out across the rails between the elevator gates and the entrance to the station. "I want to keep planting them every year so that Shion and the others can see them when we're all together again. Do you think they'll like that?"

"I'm sure they will." He followed her gaze. Below, shuttle trains rumbled back and forth, carrying passengers between the station and points throughout the city.


	3. 03

**03**

Since there were no private rooms nearby, Juli ended up walking back to her car to return the call. "I'm sorry for the delay. What's going on?"

"It's all right," said Helmer. "Say, I heard your little girl is all grown up now. You must be proud."

Juli pressed her lips together and gave a stiff nod, remembering how she'd left the two of them inside. "Thank you. She's made us all very proud of her. Is that what you called for?"

"Regrettably, no. I'm afraid I have some news concerning the one of the organizations we've been keeping tabs on."

"You mean the post-Ormus fanatics."

Helmer sighed. "Yes, one of those groups. I had my agent in the Federation military do a little surveillance work and asked her to contact me if she noticed anything out of the ordinary, and ... well, perhaps I should just let her speak for herself. Captain Roman?"

A second communications link opened on the screen, pushing Helmer's window to the side. "Yes, sir. Dr. Mizrahi?"

Juli nodded. She vaguely recognized the speaker, a youngish woman with a stern expression and a slash of dark bangs across her forehead. Lapis Roman was one of Helmer's associates, and she had come in useful--as most of the connections he cultivated eventually did--when MOMO and the others had run into some difficulty with the Federation a few years ago.

"I'm sure you have other work to do," said Roman, "so I'll try to explain this as quickly as possible. Two days ago, the Federation peacekeeping forces stationed in the outer planetary system of Third Alexandria were ambushed by a small group of anti-government insurgents. My team was supposed to be monitoring them, but weren't able to obtain any information concerning their whereabouts, or their communications prior to the attack. They appear to be part of a trend towards greater organization and sophistication that we've observed in many of these terrorist groups over the last eighteen months. We suspect they may be receiving support from one or more sources within the Federation."

"So you think there may still be individuals in the Federation government or the military with former ties to U-TIC?" said Juli. "People who would have some incentive to provide aid to these groups?"

"That's correct, ma'am."

Juli sighed. "Well, I guess we couldn't get rid of all of them." And the government had nearly destroyed itself in the attempt. During the previous year, after the truth concerning Ormus, the U-TIC Organization, and the Immigrant Fleet became widely known, the Federation Parliament--reconvening for the first time since the destruction of the UMN, with a fraction of its former membership--had embarked on an ideological witch hunt, expelling known Ormus sympathizers from its ranks and conducting investigatory hearings against countless others. The political climate at the time had approached mass hysteria, and Juli still cringed to recall how recklessly they had danced on the line between anarchy and despotism. Juli herself had come under scrutiny for her late husband's role in founding U-TIC, and for her own involvement in the research he had left behind, but that was around the time the backlash kicked in and the protests started, and her hearing was dismissed.

Even now, in spite of the government's efforts to eradicate them, there must be a few Ormus supporters left in the government. Juli couldn't imagine why they'd cling to what was left of their religion now, but her own background was in the sciences; she had never been extremely religious herself and didn't understand the fervor, the need to believe in something even after it had been proven wrong. From her perspective, having one's worldview disproved meant it was time to find a new hypothesis, but for Ormus it had been an existential crisis.

Ironically or perhaps appropriately enough, the closest similarities she could find were in politics; some of her colleagues were as adamantly dogmatic in their opinions as the followers of Ormus were in their faith. "Have you found any concrete evidence that might point to whoever's supporting them?" she said.

"Not yet," said Roman. "We searched the AMN logs, but there's no sign of recent communication between the anti-Federation groups and anyone in the government. There is another possibility; it's unlikely, but it would explain a few other incidents that have occurred under similar circumstances."

"Please explain."

"I'll try." Roman hesitated. "I wonder if you would mind clarifying something for me, though. It has to do with the foundations of the AMN. I understand you were on the development committee, so I'm assuming you know more about its construction than I do?"

"Only to a degree," said Juli. "Even those of us who designed the network don't fully understand what it is or how it functions. Our goal was to create a system that would unify the real and imaginary-number domains, instead of just operating in imaginary space the way the UMN did. When the UMN collapsed, we thought we'd have to start all over again from nothing, but during our initial exploration into the imaginary domain, we made a few discoveries that expedited the process considerably."

"Such as?"

She glanced back at the nearest entrance to the elevator station, wondering how long she'd kept them waiting already. "Well, to put it simply, none of the information stored in the original UMN was lost when that network was destroyed. Can you imagine what would've happened if that had been the case? The record of an entire civilization--our history, science, commerce, literature, everything--wiped out, as if it never existed? We'd be living in the medieval ages all over again. But all of that information was preserved, permanently embedded in the fabric of imaginary space; the only thing we lost was the means of accessing it, the programming required to store and retrieve data. So when we assembled the core structure of the AMN, we weren't building in a vacuum. The foundations for a network already existed in the imaginary-number domain. The UMN that existed before, and the imaginary-domain half of AMN, were like a scaffolding imposed on a structure that was already present, and that may have been present in some form since the dawn of human consciousness. Does that answer your question?"

Roman nodded. "So if the network functions as a system for retrieving information, then it's possible that there could be other networks built on the same structure?"

"I suppose it's theoretically possible," said Juli, "but not very likely, not on the scale you're talking about."

She had heard rumors to the effect during the Ormus inquiries last year. The SOCE had proposed the existence of some kind of "shadow network" that the suspects in the government were using to communicate without being detected, but Juli had thought it was just a hypothesis. Once the AMN infrastructure had been established, a few large corporations had established their own private networks operating exclusively within the imaginary-number domain, for internal communications and the short-range transfer of materials, but they were extremely limited in scope and were subject to regulation by the government; a project as expansive as the hypothetical shadow network seemed out of their league entirely. It had taken the combined efforts of Vector, Scientia, and the Federation government just to fund the AMN project and assemble a committee with the necessary skills.

"We never encountered anything of the sort when we were laying the groundwork for the AMN," Juli went on. "It requires a tremendous amount of financing and technical expertise to develop a network on that scale. I don't think any other organization could afford it. Are you saying you believe a group of low-tech insurgents could have built their own network parallel to the AMN, and managed to evade detection all this time?"

"No, ma'am, I'm as skeptical of that as you are. But if someone's manipulating these low-tech insurgents from behind the scenes, someone powerful ...."

"You suspect some kind of conspiracy?"

"Listen," said Roman, "suppose the minor skirmishes we've been having lately are just a cover for something bigger? Those groups can't all be acting on their own. There are too many coincidences. They must be getting information and resources from somewhere, for some purpose. I understand this must sound ... well, frankly, a bit paranoid, but I've been keeping track of undercover U-TIC agents for years. I know what it looks like when they're up to something, and that's what it looks like now."

Juli sighed and rubbed her forehead, hoping the dull ache she felt there would subside when the conversation ended. She had planned on spending the rest of the evening celebrating MOMO's birthday, not getting headaches over conspiracy theories involving an organization that wasn't even supposed to exist anymore. "Right, okay, I'll grant that it's conceivable, but--"

"There is one other thing I'd like to tell you," said Roman. "Before the peacekeeping fleet was destroyed, the insurgents seized control of their broadcast equipment. We intercepted a strange transmission from an individual we believe was acting as their leader. He was apparently in some mental distress at the time of the broadcast, spouting what sounded like nonsense. But when we analyzed the message, it turned out to be a verse from an ancient religious text dating back to the Lost Jerusalem era."

Juli's breath caught. A cold, heavy feeling had settled over her, and she didn't know why. "What do you suppose that means?"

"I wish I had the slightest idea, ma'am. I was hoping you'd know, or that you'd know someone who could find out."

"I'll see what I can do," she said, fighting a sudden urge to sink back against the car seat. "Would you mind sending me a recording of the message you received, along with your coordinates at the time of the attack and any other relevant information you can think of?"

Roman nodded again. "Already done."

Helmer, who had listened to Roman's report in silence, cut in after her. "Thank you, Captain Roman. That will be all."

"Yes, sir." Roman gave a sharp salute and closed the connection.

"Well," said Helmer. "What do you think of all this?"

"Are you asking for my professional opinion, or my intuition?" Juli winced; the headache showed no sign of departing. "I think it's possible. I _hope_ it's nonsense. But I suppose we'll need more information to be sure. I'll take a look at that message. In the meantime, will you keep me informed as well?"

Helmer nodded. "I have every intention of doing so. ... Oh, and Juli?"

"Yes?"

"Try not to worry about it today, if you can help it. I'm guessing you could probably use some rest. And do tell your daughter I hope she has a very happy birthday."

Juli sighed, trying to relax in spite of herself. "Thank you. I will."

* * *

They returned to the apartment complex and stopped in the hallway on their floor. "MOMO, why don't you go ahead inside," said Juli, with a nervous, expectant glance at Ziggy.

"All right." MOMO approached the door and keyed in the access code, and the door whisked open at her touch, the reinforced panels gliding back into the wall with hardly any sound. She stepped into the entryway. "Wow, this place seems so different now that I'm taller! I don't remember everything being so easy to reach."

Juli and Ziggy waited in the hall for a moment, then followed MOMO into the living room. They found her standing in front of the piano as if she couldn't quite believe it existed. Dark and heavy under the dust cloth, it looked like a stray apparition from a surrealist painting that had wandered into the room by mistake.

"I understand this might require some explanation," said Juli, coming to stand behind her. "You see, this piano belonged to your father."

MOMO broke from her trance and turned around. "This was Daddy's? But how--"

"He bought it so we could teach Sakura. He was researching new advances in musical therapy for her condition, and he hoped she would respond to it." Juli walked over to the piano and turned aside the cover, running her fingers over the black synthetic wood and the lab-cultured imitation ivory.

"Musical therapy?" said MOMO. "Did it help?"

"For a little while." Juli wondered if it would really have made any difference in the long term; they had never had a chance to find out. After she and Joachim separated, the piano had gone with her to Zavarov, and she had used it to monitor Sakura's progress during her treatment at the Yuriev Institute, tracking her response time and the rate at which she memorized new pieces after her exposure to the URTVs' wave forms. But Joachim already had another plan in mind, another way to save Sakura, or so he had believed. After Sakura died, the piano had suddenly become a symbol of everything that had gone wrong in Juli's life: the failure of her marriage to Joachim, their failure to treat Sakura's condition or even to agree on what was best for her. Because she couldn't stand to keep it around anymore, she had the piano moved to a UMN-transfer storage facility, and when the Miltia conflict broke out shortly afterward, she had forgot about it until recently.

New construction on the AMN uncovered things like this all the time--old storage facilities, abandoned colonies, things people had lost and abandoned, sometimes by accident, sometimes deliberately. The network was a galaxy-wide seine that stretched across real and imaginary space, dredging up lost things from the cosmic ocean floor and bringing them to light. Most of it was garbage, space junk, but occasionally they found treasure.

And sometimes the things they found were meant to remain lost. Juli pulled away as if the keys had grown hot beneath her fingers. It was almost too painful to touch--all the memories of her lessons with Sakura rose to the surface as if they'd been waiting inside the instrument all this time. She wondered if retrieving it had been a mistake after all. Maybe it would have been better to leave it in storage, to go on pretending to forget--but it was too late for that now.

"MOMO," she went on, trying to remember what she had been planning to say although the words tasted stale in her mouth, "I'd like you to consider this a very belated birthday present. A gift from your father and me."

"Mommy ...." Her voice came out in an awed whisper. "It's wonderful. May I try it?"

Juli nodded, tight-lipped. "Yes, of course. It's yours." She removed the cloth and stepped aside, and MOMO sat down at the bench, tucking her skirt around her knees, and switched on the piano's holographic display.

"There are some songs transcribed on here already," said MOMO. "I think I might be able to play them if I use my translation program to read the sheet music."

"Well ... go ahead." Juli swallowed the ache in her throat and turned away.

Ziggy hadn't moved from the entryway since they came in. When he saw her looking back, he gave a slight nod that might have indicated approval or simple affirmation, or nothing at all; whatever he intended, she found it reassuring.

Later that night Juli stood outside in the courtyard, half-listening to the sound of the piano from inside. MOMO had been practicing all evening, running through the few dozen pieces stored in the piano's database; Juli had practiced them countless times with Sakura, so that even now she found herself playing along without thinking, drumming her fingers absently on the edge of the courtyard wall, her body and her reflexes betraying her by remembering what she consciously tried to forget.

MOMO had never played before, and while she made fewer mistakes than an ordinary human would, her playing sounded stilted and mechanical, more a sequence of isolated notes struck one at a time than anything recognizable as music. But if Juli closed her eyes and let the chords blur together, she could pretend it was Sakura playing, that this was the old house where they had lived before they left for Zavarov, and that the man standing beside her, his arm across her shoulders, was--

But she realized that wasn't what she wanted anymore. She wanted to be here, now, above the noise of the city and the glare of artificial light, with the burden of living in a world that had survived its own end.

"Jan." She sighed and leaned against him. There was enough of a chill in the air to make her shiver when the wind picked up. "Do you think we're supposed to be here? I mean, do you ever wonder if any of this was meant to happen at all?"

He didn't answer, but sometimes that was his way of letting her know he was listening. His silence invited her, encouraged her.

"I've been thinking about it ever since you and Shion and the others came back from Michtam," she said. "I guess I always took it for granted that the world worked a certain way. I always thought we were on our own, but now we really are. And knowing that, knowing what we now know to be true ... it means we've been left with a terrible responsibility. Where are we supposed to go from here?"

"I'm not sure," he said, and he had been so quiet that it surprised her to hear him speak. "This seems to be the path we've chosen for ourselves. Maybe all we can do is make the best of it."

She stared out across the neon gulf of the city to the lights suspended on the horizon. "Is that really all we can do? Even we end up destroying ourselves? If we just keep making the same mistakes as always, but without a chance to go back? How will we know what's right until it's too late?"

"I guess that's what we're here to find out."

Juli shivered again, but not because of the breeze. Suddenly she felt the need to talk about anything else. She listened to the piano. "Does MOMO seem happy to you?"

"She certainly seemed that way tonight." At MOMO's request they had gone out to a quiet dinner together before heading home; she hadn't wanted anything more elaborate for her birthday. Before she returned from Vector's research labs on the _Dämmerung_, where she had undergone the transfer operation, her friends working aboard the colony had ambushed her with a surprise party, an extravagant affair masterminded by Miyuki Itsumi. MOMO had called home afterward declaring she was all partied out.

"No, I mean ...." Juli shook her head. "Do you think she's happy with me? I've tried to be a good mother, but sometimes I still feel as though I'm just pretending, like I'm just putting on an act. Because I know she'll respond favorably if I treat her with kindness, and ...."

He was silent again, and she wondered if she had said something wrong, upset him by admitting her doubts.

"It's strange," she went on, as if talking to herself now. "I used to resent MOMO because she wasn't Sakura, because no one could ever replace Sakura. And now I ... I think I must've held on to the pain for so long because it was all I had left of her. I was so afraid I'd lose her for good if I didn't hold on to something, but ...."

She closed her eyes again, and her words tapered into the breeze.

He drew his arm closer around her shoulders. Juli moved closer in turn and took a deep breath to match his breathing, trying to slow herself to his pace. She wanted to know how it felt to be as calm as he was. Maybe it was a discipline that took a hundred years to learn, and maybe that was why she knew of so few people who could put her at ease the way he did.

The last notes of Sakura's song drifted across the yard and took flight over the city, where they faded into the distant hum of traffic and the rush of wind.


	4. 04

**04**

A few days later, MOMO returned to her job at the AMN Administrative Bureau for the first time since her operation.

Before her arrival on Fifth Jerusalem, she had spent about a week on the _Dämmerung_ with Vector's Third Division, undergoing preliminary analysis on her new frame. It had taken less than a day to transfer her operating system from her former body into Vector's transgenic model, but afterward she had to stay for a series of examinations to determine whether she had successfully adjusted to the transfer. Over the next few days, engineers and specialists from the Third Division had tested her physical coordination, operating system compatibility, and psychological responses and made minor adjustments as necessary.

When she wasn't required for testing, she had spent most of her free time visiting friends and former colleagues from the AMN Development Committee, many of whom she had last seen over a year ago. A number of the original members, including those from Scientia and the government, had left the _Dämmerung_ to continue local-level development on the AMN in other parts of the Federation; those who remained had formed the core of Vector's new AMN Division, which now occupied a permanent suite of labs and offices on the _Dämmerung_, or had returned to their work in other divisions.

She had found Miyuki in Second, tinkering with some old AGWS frames. With no demand for new anti-Gnosis weaponry in the last two years, Vector had discontinued the VX line and shifted its focus to producing more versatile AMWS units, but Miyuki had salvaged the remaining AGWS parts and spent her free time researching ways to make them useful.

"I think I'm starting to understand how Shion felt about KOS-MOS," Miyuki had said when MOMO stopped by to visit her. "These units were slated to be disposed of, but I just couldn't bear to see them scrapped. So I snuck in and rescued them from the trash dump." She flashed a mischievous smile. "I've been taking a look at some of the research left behind by the Professor of the Robot Academy. That old guy might have been a little senile, but he made some incredible contributions to the field. I think I might be able to adapt some of his innovations to work with conventional AGWS frames."

MOMO peered up at the scaffolding around the unit Miyuki had been working on. "So you're redesigning this one? What are you going to use it for?"

"I'm not really sure yet," said Miyuki, pulling her safety visor over her face, "but it's going to be awesome." She reached down from the scaffolding. "Would you mind handing me that nano-welder?"

* * *

Often that week, making her way among corridors she knew by heart, MOMO had felt an unexpected stir of longing for that time, in the first days and weeks after the _Elsa_ departed for Lost Jerusalem and before the _Dämmerung_ reestablished contact with the Federation, when everything was uncertain and all their hopes and fears had balanced on the construction of the new network. In the beginning, it had been their only chance of going home.

Moments before the collapse of the UMN two years ago, both the _Dämmerung_ and the _Elsa_ had gate-jumped to a galaxy outside Federation territory, far from any known worlds with human inhabitants. In the absence of Vector's former leadership, a group of Scientia agents who had infiltrated the corporate ranks had quietly stepped into the breach, assuming control of the main R&D divisions and reorganizing them as necessary to serve the anti-UMN group's agenda. The takeover had proceeded smoothly and without opposition, and later, when it was clear there would be no attempt to oust the new leaders, Doctus herself had admitted that taking over Vector had been among Scientia's objectives from the beginning.

Scientia had its own technology, developed in secret over the past century, but its resources and influence were limited; Vector, on the other hand, had been the single largest corporation in the universe for hundreds, even thousands of years, but after Shion and the others put a stop to Wilhelm's plans, the company had lost its focus and would have drifted without aim, like the _Dämmerung_ itself, stranded in unfamiliar territory, if Scientia hadn't intervened and set a new course.

The AMN Development Committee had emerged from the reorganization of the company under Scientia's leadership, and had immediately set out in pursuit of another of Scientia's objectivesbuilding a new network to replace the UMN. The first task appointed to the AMN Committee after the _Elsa_'s departure had been the construction of a simple transfer column, linking the present coordinates of the _Dämmerung_ with those of a former UMN column in the region of Second Miltia. Besides serving as a prototype for the network structure and a trial run for the development team, if successful the column would allow them to return to civilized space, where they could continue the project with the aid and approval of the Federation government.

Those initial steps of the project had been the most difficult. The work that came later had been more complex, orchestrated on a much greater scale, but at least by then they knew what they were doing. Building the first transfer column had been a shot in the dark, like trying to build a bridge by throwing a rope across an abyss and praying it caught hold of something on the other side. Scientia's researchers had spent nearly a century developing the blueprint for a network spanning the real and imaginary domains, along with a two-phase plan for implementing it, but until now the design existed only in theory; it had never been tested outside of simulations. Even Doctus, the highest-ranking member of Scientia present on the committee, had no idea whether it would actually work.

And at first, it didn't. Not on the first try, or the second, or the fifth. Each time, their efforts to construct a stable hyperspace column produced transient structures that collapsed within a few hours, and after each failed attempt the ensuing arguments over what went wrong and how to fix it had brought tensions within the recently-formed committee close to the breaking point. Finally, on or about the tenth attempt, they managed to open a channel through hyperspace that showed no signs of instability over a twenty-four-hour monitoring period, and with some hesitation, they declared the experiment a tentative success.

That evening, as the AMN Committee celebrated its first major achievement and the crew of the _Dämmerung_ prepared for the gate-jump back to Second Miltia, MOMO returned to her quarters in the residential wing to prepare her final radio transmission to the _Elsa_. The smaller ship had been traveling at light speed for about two months now, heading towards the last known coordinates of Lost Jerusalem, and already the time difference had rendered two-way communication impractical at best. By the time Jr. and Shion and the others received her message, the _Dämmerung_ would have long since completed the jump to Second Miltia, and the _Elsa_ would be far out of range, unable to send a reply.

It was the worst possible time to find herself at a loss for words.

"... So I just wanted to tell you that I miss you all very much, and even though I'm proud of what our development team has accomplished here, I know I'm going to miss you even more after we leave tonight. But I promise, when we get back to the Federation we'll all be working as hard as we can, and we'll do our best to build a new network so we can reach you." MOMO hesitated, swallowing. "And, um ... I really, truly believe we'll meet again someday. All of us, chaos and KOS-MOS too. I don't know how I know, but I can feel it. Until then, I ... I wish you all the best." She had intended to say more, but her voice wavered and she had to turn away from the screen; she didn't want to end her last message in tears.

The gate-jump proceeded without incident, and after they arrived in Second Miltian space, they had sealed off the column and deactivated its AMN pulse. Although it occupied the same coordinates as one of the old UMN columns, only the members of the AMN Development Committee who had been directly involved in its construction knew the access codes that would reopen it. MOMO had wanted to leave the column open, but she knew it might endanger the _Elsa_'s mission if other groups seeking a way to Lost Jerusalem tried to get there first.

They made radio contact with Second Miltia, and from Representative Helmer's grim assessment of the situation, they had gathered their first impression of how profoundly the world had changed in these last few months. Each planetary systemassuming any others had survived the disappearance phenomenon that had engulfed some eighty percent of the galaxy by the last available reportwould have become an island in space, cut off from communication even with its closest neighbors. On Second Miltia, the months of isolation had taken their toll. Half of the planet's population had already evacuated into space before the UMN transfer columns disappeared; two years later, their whereabouts remained unknown. The remaining population faced a shortage of nearly every service and material resource necessary for maintaining a semblance of social order. The economy, heavily dependent on interplanetary commerce, had nearly collapsed, and Helmer's joyless reports on the state of affairs reflected the morale of the public. Until the network was reestablished, there would be no Galaxy Federation, and no hope of rebuilding alliances between the surviving worlds.

Fortunately, with the help of the Second Miltian government and the technology and former employees of the UMN Control Center, the AMN Committee had been able to proceed at once toward its goal of building a galaxy-wide network. The discovery of large amounts of data preserved in the imaginary domain accelerated the reconstruction process, so that in a few months contact points had been reestablished throughout the former Federation, and the surviving members of the Second Miltian escape fleet began to return home.

In her weekly reports before the AMN Committee, MOMO mapped the network's progress as a growing web of connections imposed on a map of the stars, linking Second Miltia with Atalya, Keltia, Fifth Jerusalem, all the way to distant Tessedora at the outer limit of the former Federation territory, as if the entire galaxy were being incorporated, one star at a time, into some vast constellation. In her dreams she saw bright threads extending from her fingertips like a cat's cradle, or stretching out before her like a maze of tightropes, and when she touched the glowing cords she could hear heartbeats, voices, the hopes and dreams of all of humanity pulsing between the stars. And always at the back of her mind was the awareness that somewhere in the darkness at the edge of the universe, beyond the reach of the ever-expanding net, the _Elsa_ was on its way to Lost Jerusalem.

With reports coming in from the other surviving worlds, it became clear that none of them had weathered the last few months any more successfully than Second Miltia, and many had suffered far worse. A number had succumbed to anarchy, petty dictatorship, or civil strife, and order had to be restored in each instance: there were hundreds of minor wars and uprisings to pacify, thousands of diplomatic conflicts to resolve. While MOMO and the rest of the AMN Development Committee continued their work from their headquarters on the _Dämmerung_, Juli returned to Fifth Jerusalem to serve on a new Department of Interplanetary Reconciliations, formed in cooperation with the remaining members of the Federation Parliament and the Executive Committee. She was often away for weeks at a time, negotiating disputes on distant worlds, and during especially violent or politically charged situations, Ziggy volunteered to accompany heralways apologizing to MOMO for his absence, and promising that they would both return safely.

MOMO worried for them when they were gone, but most of the time she was too busy with her own responsibilities to feel lonely. Besides, she had seen the way her mother and Ziggy acted lately when they were together, and she thought some time alone might be good for them, even if they did have to spend it in the middle of a war zone.

By the end of the year the preliminary stage of the AMN Project was nearly complete, with communications and transfer columns reestablished between the major administrative and commercial centers that had escaped the disappearance phenomenon. The committee had already laid out its plans to extend network access to lower-priority sites within the following months, continuing the first phase. But then the anti-Ormus hysteria that had been gathering during the latter part of the year reached a fever pitch, and the hearings and investigations brought the AMN project to a standstill. Juli was furious, more so when she received a summons to appear before the investigatory panel herself, on charges of conspiring with the founder of U-TIC. MOMO had never seen her mother so angry.

"Oh, and they've informed me they're confiscating both of you, too," she had said to MOMO and Ziggy, her voice sharp with sarcasm as she held out the notification for them to read. "'Confiscating,' as if you were" She gave a fierce, humorless laugh. "No, I don't believe this. I can't tell whether they want you as witnesses or material evidence. This is insane. All the work we've done in the past year to bring the world back together, and its first order of business is to turn on itself and tear itself to pieces. Honestly, I don't know why I have any faith left in humanity at all."

"Mommy, you don't really mean that," said MOMO with a gasp. "Please don't be upset. I'm sure things will turn out okay."

MOMO hadn't been so sure of it herself when she said it, but it turned out she was right; the hearing was canceled before MOMO and Ziggy were called in for questioning, and an official end to the investigations came soon afterward, with a public apology from the acting director of the Executive Committee. In the weeks and months that followed, life in the Federation gradually returned to something approaching normal. With the initial construction of the network completed, MOMO had taken a step back from her involvement in the project, leaving the AMN Development Committee under the direction of Scientia and Vector, and returning to Fifth Jerusalem to work in the AMN Administrative Bureau recently established by the Federation government. After living and working aboard the _Dämmerung_ for more than a year, she was finally free to go home.

It felt strange coming back to Fifth Jerusalem after so much time had passed. Everything seemed different now, as if the past had happened to a different person in a different universe. And in a way, maybe it had. MOMO couldn't tell what had changed more: the world around her, or herself. Still, not all of the changes had been for the worse.

They had a proper home now, for instance. At first they had stayed in the high-rise complex where Juli had lived for many years by herself, where she had lived together with MOMO before the incidents on Michtam. But it soon became apparent that what had been a comfortable living space for one or two residents proved decidedly less so with the addition of a third person and a dog. As soon as she could afford it, Juli had arranged for their relocation to a larger apartment in the same district, one with more space and a private courtyard on a terrace overlooking the city.

Today, as she had done for the last few days since returning form her operation, MOMO awoke in her own room with the light from the courtyard slanting through the window across her bed. For a few minutes she lay gazing at the ceiling as she tried to remember where she was, and the answer occurred to her as if for the first time: _I'm home._

She got up and looked out her bedroom window, past the garden beds in the courtyard and the table where her mother sat every morning to read the news, over the wall to the faint gray shapes of buildings in the haze. The orbital tower made a barely visible mark on the horizon, a spindly cord reaching up to the sky. In a different part of the city stood the low solid block of the AMN Bureau, modeled after the architecture of the former UMN Control Centers found on nearly every planet in the Federation.

As she turned from the window MOMO caught a glimpse of herself in the mirror near her bed and jumped in surprise, then laughed; more than a week after the operation, her new appearance still startled her sometimes. She dressed and went outside, pausing to run a hand over the piano keys as she crossed the living room. She had been practicing every night since she returned home.

In the courtyard, Alby trotted up to her and ran eager circles around her feet. He had regarded her warily for the last few days, as if he couldn't decide whether she was a stranger or someone he knew, but he seemed to have warmed up to her by now. She bent down, swept the little dog into her arms, and carried him over to the table. "Good morning, Mommy! Good morning, Ziggy!"

Juli looked up from the article she had been reading, smoothing the worry from her face a moment too late. "Good morning, MOMO. How did you sleep?"

"Very well," said MOMO. "It's so nice to be back in my own room." Alby squirmed and kicked in her arms. She set him down, and the instant she released him he took off as if flung from a slingshot, straight for his usual target. MOMO laughed again, watching Ziggy attempt to fend off the dog's attention. "Ziggy, he likes you."

"I'm aware of that." Pushing Alby gently but firmly aside, he walked over to MOMO. "We can leave whenever you're ready."

"All right." Before her operation, he had been accompanying her to the AMN Bureau's tactical sim lab, where she was working on approving a new combat-training simulator for the government. They had been in the process of testing the encephalon software before she left. "I'll be ready soon," she said. "I just need to have breakfast."

"There's some hot water left on the stove if you want tea," Juli called after her, as MOMO headed back into the kitchen.


	5. 05

**05**

When Juli arrived in her office at SOCE headquarters later that morning, she found her work awaiting her as usual. Although she lent her presence regularly to some half a dozen government agencies and made less frequent contributions to many others, Juli still identified herself primarily as a member of the Contact Subcommittee, and she still carried out most of her work from office in the SOCE complex in downtown Fifth Jerusalem.

The Subcommittee itself had undergone an organization-wide identity crisis in the last two years. At first, with no new reports of Gnosis encounters anywhere in the galaxy, the SOCE appeared to have outlived the reason for its existence, and when the government first reconvened there had been talk of disbanding it. But Juli and the other Subcommittee members had argued to keep their positions, citing a number of bizarre non-Gnosis incidents occurring in the aftermath of the disappearance phenomenon--events that had fallen well within the Subcommittee's unique realm of expertise--and at last the Federation Parliament had voted to expand the role of the SOCE to include investigations of all Gnosis-like activity, meaning any abnormal phenomena that originated in the imaginary domain.

Juli and her colleagues had investigated more than a few previously unheard-of occurrences since then, incidents that appeared to stem from changes in the relationship between real and imaginary space brought about by the AMN project. Reports of paranormal activity had increased significantly, and the Subcommittee had to take even the most outlandish claims seriously because they no longer had any idea what to expect. As a result the SOCE had proven its usefulness many times over, to the extent that Juli wished they had a little less work to do. Between Subcommittee business and her other responsibilities, she hardly had any free time.

Not that this situation was new to her, or, if she were honest with herself, entirely unpleasant. She had always thrived on the pressures of commitments and deadlines, and enjoyed pushing herself to take on more responsibility than she thought she could handle; when it wasn't infuriating, it could be exhilarating. But sometimes all she got out of a day's work was a headache and a short temper.

By mid-afternoon, she had reason to suspect that today was going to be one of those days. Then her connection gear announced an incoming message, and a glance at the sender's ID confirmed her suspicion. Reluctantly she accepted the call; she had hoped to put off having to think about this for a while longer. "Yes, Doctus?"

"Good afternoon, Dr. Mizrahi. I did some research on the data you sent me the other day. If you have a minute, I'll go over the results."

"Go ahead." If she hadn't already been seated, Juli would have felt compelled to sit down; she could already tell from Doctus' tone that the news wouldn't be good.

"It seems your contact in the military was correct in attributing the words to an ancient religious text. Are you familiar at all with the Book of Revelation?"

"Yes, I ...." Juli hesitated. Joachim had taken an interest in it shortly before the Miltia Conflict began. The passages he quoted to her, full of incomprehensible horrors and inscrutable yet menacing omens, had made her feel uneasy even before she knew what was happening on Miltia. In retrospect, she wondered if he had hoped to receive some sort of insight into the impending catastrophe by studying the nightmares of the past. "... I've heard of it."

Doctus seemed impressed. "The verse in question comes from a chapter referring to ... well, if you'll pardon the phrase, a figure known as the whore of Babylon. There are a number of different interpretations, but for our purposes, it would seem to be a warning of some kind, or possibly a threat."

"Babylon?" said Juli. At times like this, she got the impression that Doctus was hiding something behind the shaded glasses and the wry half-smile she always wore. "What do you mean, a warning? I presume you're referring to more than their immediate intention to destroy the peacekeeping fleet."

"Well, obviously." Doctus' expression hadn't changed, but for a moment Juli detected slightly more than the usual level of sarcasm in her tone. "The 'Babylon' of the Book of Revelation was a society consumed by decadence and corruption, condemned for persecuting religious believers--a comparison that seems particularly appropriate given the political climate of the last few years."

Juli felt her throat tighten. "The anti-Ormus hearings. Well I suppose they have every reason to be angry with us. In our enthusiasm to rid the world of a false religion, we became just as fanatical as they were."

"Those are surprisingly tolerant words from a member of the Federation government, Dr. Mizrahi."

"You forget that I was also on the receiving end of the government's 'persecution.' So you'll have to forgive me if I seem a little jaded."

"Sorry to offend you." But again the tone of Doctus' voice, the upturn at the corners of her mouth, suggested otherwise.

Juli pretended she hadn't noticed. "Have you found out anything else? What about the possibility that these organizations have been using some sort of underground network to coordinate their attacks?"

"Nothing yet, but we're looking into it. If we do find anything, you'll be the first person outside of Scientia to know."

"Thank you," said Juli. "I'll be waiting."

Doctus gave a brief nod and signed off, and Juli stared at the blank screen of her connection gear. She had sent the data from Captain Roman to Scientia for analysis because Doctus had been the AMN Committee's expert in residence on ancient symbolism. It had been Scientia's idea to call the new network _axis mundi_, the axis of the world; as Doctus herself had explained, it signified a point at which opposing forces met and the heavens joined the earth, a fitting designation for a network that would unite real and imaginary space. Doctus had also designed the AMN insignia, a dual-serpent motif combining the former UMN logo with Scientia's infinity symbol: a small version of it hovered in the corner of the screen of Juli's connection gear.

Juli placed a call to Helmer, but he didn't answer--he must have been busy, or out of his office--so she left a message explaining what Doctus had just told her, then went back to the work she had been doing before the interruption. When she received another call about an hour later, she picked it up without thinking.

"Representative--" And then she stopped, realizing that the speaker on the other end of the line was someone else. "Oh. I'm sorry. I thought you were ...."

The woman, a Federation official and one of the co-founders of the Department of Interplanetary Reconciliation, brushed off her apology. "Dr. Mizrahi, I'm afraid there's been an incident with the Patmos Delegation. Your presence is requested at an emergency meeting of the DIRE to determine an immediate course of action."

"The Patmos Delegation?" Juli drew a blank for a moment, then remembered the team of government representatives and humanitarian aid workers dispatched last week to the planetary system of Patmos, which had only recently received access to the AMN. "What's going on?"

"The situation is extremely urgent; that's all I'm authorized to tell you." She hesitated, looking sheepish. "Actually, that's all I know right now. A full report will be given at the meeting, but until then it's strictly confidential."

"I see." She inclined her head slightly, contriving to look gracious and insulted at the same time. "And when is this meeting being held? Or is that also strictly confidential?"

"The, ah, meeting will begin when all required personnel have logged in to the Federation Parliament assembly interface," said the DIRE member, her face masklike with the effort of trying to appear unperturbed. Juli's gaze sometimes had the effect of making people squirm behind their businesslike faades. "That is to say, as soon as possible."

"Well then, I certainly won't delay you any longer." Juli executed a few keystrokes and turned her chair away from her desk as a bank of communication screens opened along the perimeter of the room. Although the Federation Parliament's assembly program could handle conferences between hundreds of thousands of members at once, the central decision-making board of the DIRE comprised only about two dozen individuals, Juli herself among them, so the virtual environment for their meeting today was a significantly scaled-down version. Most of the screens displayed holographic representations of the department members who had already arrived, but a few remained blank, showing only the double-serpent icon on a flat gray background.

"Good afternoon, Dr. Mizrahi," said the chairman of the department, a senior politician who had been appointed on the merits of his experience in handling postwar reparations after the Miltia Conflict. "Glad you could join us. We'll begin as soon as everyone's accounted for."

A few minutes later, all of the remaining vacant windows had been filled or, if the member in question was absent, closed down to make more room for the others.

The chairman looked around at the holographic assembly. "Is that everyone? All right, then, I think we can get started." He lowered his gaze for a moment, studying something off-screen. "As you have all been made aware, we just received word of a crisis in the Patmos system involving members of this very department. Our latest update on the situation indicates that the delegates' spacecraft was captured by anti-Federation terrorists shortly after gating out in Patmian space. Its crew and passengers have been taken hostage, and their captors have made certain demands in exchange for their safe return. Specifically, they've requested the access code to the sealed column linking Second Miltia with the galaxy of Lost Jerusalem. This information is considered proprietary and extremely sensitive, and must not be allowed to fall into the hands of forces hostile to the Federation. We are here to discuss a possible solution which minimizes the risk to the lives and safety of the hostages while preserving the secrecy of classified government information. You may now speak freely."

At his invitation they all began speaking at once--shouting, really. Juli stayed quiet, waiting for her unease to subside. Perhaps she had spent too much time turning over Lapis Roman's report in her mind, but now Juli understood why Roman and Helmer had suspected a conspiracy. She was beginning to suspect one herself after the events of the last few days.

"Pardon me, chairman," said Juli, raising her voice above the noise. "Is there anything else we should know regarding the incident?" She paused; the other members of the Department had begun to fall silent, turning their attention on her. "I presume the terrorists made some sort of broadcast stating their demands. If so, it might be relevant to our investigation to review the content of that transmission before we proceed any further."

The chairman stared at her with the look of a professor confronted by an unexpectedly well-prepared student. "As a matter of fact, there was such a broadcast. We received it about an hour ago, shortly after we learned of the incident."

"Can you replay it?"

"Yes, but it's rather ... well, you'll see. Just a moment, please." He typed something into a keyboard off-screen. "The voice in this broadcast has been identified as belonging to one of the delegates, but he appears to have been coerced into speaking."

The message began with a hiss of white noise, followed by a young male voice shakily reciting the terrorists' demands. Then the tone of his voice changed, became pitched and frantic, like a street-corner evangelist announcing the end of the world. "_So he carried me away in the Spirit into the wilderness. And I saw a woman sitting on a scarlet beast, which was full of names of blasphemy, having seven heads and ten horns .... And on her forehead a name was written ...._"

The transmission ended abruptly in a shrill burst of static; a few members of the DIRE winced or covered their ears.

"As you can see," said the chairman, "the first part of the message is fairly straightforward. But our analysts have been trying to make sense of the last part since we received it."

"It sounds like some kind of religious message," said one of the department members. "Is this another one of those lunatic post-Ormus cults?"

"It certainly seems that way," Juli said. "In fact, the message ...." She hesitated. The attack on the Federation Fleet in Third Alexandria hadn't been revealed to the public yet, or even to most of the civilian government, and she had the feeling Helmer and Lapis Roman wanted to keep it that way for now. Besides, her own intuition told her not to let on how much she already knew.

"Chairman, isn't this all rather irrelevant?" said the woman who had notified Juli of the meeting. "With all due respect to Dr. Mizrahi, let's not forget that there are more important matters at hand than trying to decipher the meaning of a few lines about some ancient hallucination. As we all saw from the broadcast footage, innocent lives are at stake, and every moment we waste puts them in greater danger. I strongly recommend we devote our energies to developing a solution." She settled back in her chair with a look of vindictive satisfaction, meeting Juli's eyes just long enough to make the unspoken message clear.

As in most Federation agencies, the DIRE had its own internal politics, its own invisible hierarchy, and its own history of disputes and disagreements and contests to determine which of its members held the most influence; sometimes the internal conflicts dwarfed whatever issues the agency had been formed to address. Juli didn't exactly enjoy participating in those kinds of games, and the irony of rampant infighting in an organization ostensibly dedicated to resolving conflicts wasn't lost on her, but she had to maintain her own status if she wanted her opinion to be taken seriously in the future. While the other department members proposed solutions, Juli sat in silent fury. They might pretend to ignore the exchange now, but they'd all have noticed and kept score.

"I suppose a conventional military strike is out of the question?" said one of the members, sounding as if he hoped to be contradicted.

The chairman nodded, and the other man looked crestfallen. "The overt use of force is neither advisable nor practical under the circumstances. Besides, I doubt we'd be able to obtain authorization for such an action on short notice, even under the Emergency Powers Act."

Another member spoke up. "What about the Federation Police?"

"Unfortunately, this is out of their jurisdiction," said the chairman. "Patmos hasn't agreed to rejoin the Federation yet. That's what our delegates were going there to discuss before they were captured. And the new Patmian government has been notoriously hard to work with--they don't trust the Federation. We've already sent them a message requesting special permission to send the GFPD or the military's special forces, and they haven't responded. If we proceed anyway, it could jeopardize our relations with Patmos."

"Then we'll have to go in covertly," said Juli. Her pride still ached from the other woman's rebuke, and Juli was anxious to reassert her influence. "We'll need to send one of our own agents to infiltrate the base and evacuate the hostages without being detected by either the terrorists or the Patmian government. As for the legal implications, we'll sort that out when the delegates are safe. It'll be dangerous, but if it succeeds, I believe you'll find that it meets both of the requirements outlined at the beginning of this discussion, Chairman."

The chairman raised an eyebrow. "And I assume you have someone in mind for the job?"

"As a matter of fact, I do," said Juli, regretting the words as she spoke them, but it was too late to back out. She had the attention of the entire assembly; if she failed to provide a solution, her credibility and her reputation would suffer. Biting her tongue, she stared out at the rest of the department from the corner she'd backed herself into. Even before she said it, she hated herself for what she was about to say. "And if you'll excuse me for a moment, I may be able to contact him right now."


	6. 06

**06**

"Over here, Ziggy!"

As MOMO's voice drifted through the trees, Ziggy's sensors picked up her signal ahead, nearing a group of moving objects. "Careful, MOMO," he called back to her. "There are several target drones headed in your direction."

"Don't worry, I can detect them too." By now she had stopped moving, and her signal hovered in his field of vision, a stationary point before the approaching cluster of units, but the trees blocked his view of them.

He pushed himself to catch up with her, feeling resistance as something within him strained to its limit. Even with regular maintenance his systems hadn't been performing up to their usual capacity lately. _I really am getting old._

It was difficult for him to maneuver here anyway; the forest floor was rocky and uneven, an obstacle course of boulders and tree roots and shallow ditches. MOMO had designed it, and the scenery reflected her peculiar aesthetic: the trees blossomed in pastel clouds of pink, lavender, and blue, and hazy golden light spread between their branches from a sky like a runny watercolor painting filled with stars. The mossy ground underfoot teemed with flowers, which he tended to notice with regret only after he had stepped on them. Once, in a clearing off to the side of the path, he thought he had seen a creature like a horse with a horn on its forehead, but he decided not to ask MOMO about it.

It struck him as a slightly inappropriate design for a battle simulator, but they were only using it to test the system's programming capabilities. Up ahead, he finally caught sight of MOMO standing in another, wider clearing, and reached her just as the first of the target drones crept from the shadows under the trees on the far side. "You ready?"

"Ready!" MOMO gazed along the sight of her new ether bow. She had uploaded data from the real weapon into the simulator program to construct a virtual replica that she could use for practice. She aimed and shot at the nearest of the units. The projectile connected in an explosion of blue-white sparks, flipping the tank onto its back with its legs scrabbling at the air. MOMO frowned and fired another shot; this time the explosion ripped the tank apart. "I hate when they go upside-down like that," she said. "I know they're just programs, but I feel sorry for them."

"Stay on guard," he said. "Here come the rest of them."

"Right." MOMO drew her bow again. Together they fought off the remaining units, littering the clearing with warped plates of scrap metal and burned-out circuitry that smoked ominously among the flowers. Still catching her breath, MOMO lowered her weapon and turned to Ziggy. "Are you okay?"

He nodded. "Were you able to get any readings?"

"Yes, everything appears to be functioning normally. My sensors detect no errors in the battle program."

"That's good." He stared across the clearing, distracted by a sudden flicker of apprehension. The soft light had begun to fade, and purple shadows lengthened under the trees. A scattering of fireflies blinked into existence over the clearing, hovering with no apparent distress among the junked machine parts.

MOMO touched his arm, startling him, although he didn't flinch. "Is something wrong?"

"I don't know," he said, still gazing into the deeper shadows across the clearing. "Do you sense anything?"

"Well, no, but ...." Suddenly she gasped and pointed. "Over there! What's that?"

He looked, and after a moment saw what she had indicated--a movement along the edge of the clearing, no more substantial than a mirage or a shadow. His sensors insisted nothing was there at all; he and MOMO were the only two life forms within range. But then he began to notice more of them, until the shadows of the forest all around them swarmed with mirages as if the landscape itself had come to life. He stepped forward, shielding MOMO with his arm. "Whatever it is, it looks like we're surrounded."

"What should we do?" She drew closer to his side, trying to keep her voice from wavering.

"I suggest we end the simulation now and file an error report. Maybe try to run some diagnostics from outside the system. In any case, I don't think we should stay here. I'm not sure what's going on, but if it continues, the structure might become unstable."

"All right," said MOMO. "Commencing logout sequence."

A few moments later, he opened his eyes in the dive lab in Fifth Jerusalem's AMN headquarters. In the adjacent dive unit, MOMO sat up and pulled off her headgear as if it had suddenly transformed into something repellent, like a giant insect. She stood and walked over to one of the monitoring terminals along the wall, and he followed a few steps behind her.

"That's strange," she said, frowning at the screen. "This isn't showing any errors in the program at all."

"I wonder what it could have been."

The terminal sounded an alert, and a symbol in the corner of the screen lit up. "There's an incoming call. Oh, it's from Mommy! Maybe she'll know what the problem is." She accepted the connection.

"Good afternoon, MOMO. Jan," she added, noticing him behind MOMO. Her voice sounded tense and slightly breathless. "How was the test run?"

"It went okay," said MOMO, "except we noticed something weird at the end. We couldn't tell what it was, but we thought maybe you would know."

"If you send me a copy of the error report, I'll take a look at it later." Juli's eyes moved restlessly. "Right now, Jan, I'm afraid I have a rather large favor to ask of you. Are you both alone over there?"

Ziggy glanced around the room, half expecting to see shadows at the edges of his vision, but the scenery remained inanimate. "Yes, we're the only ones using the sim lab today."

"All right. What I'm about to tell you is confidential until further notice. I'm in an emergency conference at the moment, but I've been granted permission to speak with you privately, so I'll make this brief." She glanced down, and a troubled look crossed her face. "Would you ... be willing to consider taking on a potentially dangerous assignment on behalf of the Federation government and the Department of Interplanetary Reconciliation? You don't have to accept," she added before he could reply. "I want you to understand that this is entirely voluntary, and you have my permission to refuse." She shot him a look that was half apologetic and half imploring, almost as if she hoped he _would_ refuse.

"I understand. What is the assignment?"

Juli hesitated, her gaze skirting to the side again. "It's a hostage situation. Some members of the DIRE were captured en route to the Patmos system and are being held by a terrorist group with suspected ties to Ormus. You'll receive the full briefing if you decide to accept, but basically, we need someone to infiltrate the terrorist headquarters and rescue the hostages as soon as possible. If you're not up for it, I'm sure we can find someone else."

"No, it's all right. Should I report to the DIRE immediately for further instructions?"

"Are you sure about this?" A note of desperation had entered her voice, and when their eyes met again, hers conveyed things they hadn't discussed with MOMO--things like his recent maintenance reports, for instance.

MOMO leaned forward. "Mommy, let me come too! We can rescue the hostages together!"

Juli and Ziggy exchanged more unspoken communication, and then Juli turned to MOMO. "I'm not so sure that's a good idea, MOMO. Your database contains information vital to the government and the AMN Project. The terrorists might be after those data as well. If you should fall into their hands ...."

"Oh." MOMO's head and shoulders dropped. "I just wanted to help Ziggy."

"It's all right," he said. "I appreciate the offer, but I'd rather you kept yourself safe here. I should be fine on my own."

"MOMO, would you mind waiting outside for a minute?" said Juli. "Ziggurat has to talk to the DIRE about his assignment."

"All right." MOMO shot a last worried look at the two of them and reluctantly left the room.

"There is one other thing I'd like to tell you in private," said Juli after MOMO had gone. She sounded hesitant to mention it, as if she had been afraid it would sway his decision. "I just spoke with Doctus of Scientia a few moments before I called you. She expressed an interest in your mission and offered additional support should you require it. You'll have to enter the base alone, but Scientia will provide an escort and assist your escape if necessary."

"Understood. I accept the offer."

"Jan ...."

"What is it?"

Juli sighed. "Nothing. Just ... be careful, all right?"

"Don't worry, I plan on it."

But she had already turned away from the screen, leaving the transmission open while she faced a series of other windows projected in an arc across the room. "He's agreed to do the mission," said Juli. "I have him on the line now if you're prepared to speak to him directly." She gestured over the keyboard, and the view into the room shifted as the screen snapped into alignment with the others.

For the next half hour he sat through a briefing containing rather more information than necessary about the Patmos autonomous state, including its relatively negligible history as a member of the Federation prior to the collapse of the UMN. Ziggy had seen enough emergency missions like this one to know that the history lesson was probably intended to cover up a lack of information relevant to the assignment itself. That made him nervous, but--he _had_ seen his share of emergency missions, and he had completed most of them with some degree of success in spite of the odds against him.

Even so, he left the briefing with a vague sense of disquiet, which he suspected was due to something he had seen or heard in the last half hour, but now he couldn't remember what had triggered it. He dismissed it as a case of the groundless anxiety he sometimes experienced prior to a mission, an instinct left over from his previous life, and one of the many human instincts he'd long since learned to ignore. After the briefing, he received the equipment and upgrades he had requested from the DIRE and departed at once from the orbital space port. He stopped once at a docking colony to meet up with the escort from Scientia, and the two ships continued together along the newly constructed hyperspace route to Patmos.

Hours later, they gated out at the edge of the Patmos region. The ship he had received on loan from the DIRE was the smaller of the two, and had room for only a few passengers besides himself; Scientia's was considerably larger and was equipped with a device that concealed it from radar detection. Both of the ships had visual camouflage that rendered them nearly invisible except for the faint blur of their passage against the stars. Scientia had developed much of its own technology independently, at times illegally, in the hundred years since its founding, and the de facto merger between Scientia and Vector had united two widely divergent paths of research. Ziggy hadn't been surprised to learn that Scientia had an entire department committed to developing equipment for covert missions. Their contributions had proven useful on a number of his own assignments in the last two years, and many of the same technologies had found their way into government and consumer use through Vector, although a far greater number remained classified and had never been released to the public.

He piloted the smaller vessel toward the battered remains of an Immigrant Fleet colony which looked as though it had drifted in space for years, abandoned perhaps even before this area lost contact with the Federation. In that time it had become a reef of garbage and debris, its outer hull scarred with craters from the impact of various objects.

"Looks as though they're not exactly running a tight ship here," said Doctus from aboard the larger craft. Her voice came in over the interlink device he had installed temporarily at the supply depot, and he had the unnerving impression of hearing her speak as if from inside his head. "Well, you're less talkative than usual," she said after he had been silent for a while. "If that's even possible. _Aqua profunda est quieta._ Something on your mind?"

"I'm just trying to figure out a strategy."

"Of course you are." The interlink only transmitted visual information from his end to hers, and not the other way around, but he could hear the mocking smile imprinted on her voice.

"What's that supposed to mean?"

"Nothing. I expected as much from you."

They were both silent as he considered his approach. His target was an open docking bay used for loading and receiving cargo. With the smaller ship's camouflage and his cloaking device activated, he could land with a relatively low risk of detection; after that, he would have to improvise. The DIRE had been unable to provide any information on the interior layout of the base at the time of his briefing. He steered the ship closer, wondering if he was heading into a trap. It wouldn't be the first time, and he had sufficient confidence in his ability to figure a way out if that happened, but something about the mission still left him unsettled. The feeling was worse than it had been a few hours before; merely dismissing it as irrational hadn't worked this time, and he hadn't felt this way since Michtam, as if there were something he needed to remember that kept slipping from his grasp.

In the distance, the transparent greenish blur of Doctus' ship settled into a solitary holding pattern around the base, where it would remain on alert for backup while he was inside. Along with his apprehensions about the mission itself, he had the feeling there was more to her being here than the reasons she had given. Perhaps she also suspected a trap, but that didn't explain why she seemed to have taken a personal interest in his well-being lately, or why he felt strangely reassured by her presence. Even her access to his mind through the interlink didn't bother him as much as he thought it would. He would be relieved when the mission was over and he could have the device removed, but at least it was programmed with inhibiting mechanisms that blocked direct access to his emotions and certain areas of his memory, so it wasn't as if she could read his mind. Any infringement on his privacy made him uncomfortable--perhaps because, as property of the government, he had so little of it to infringe on in the first place--but Doctus, in spite of her condescending attitude, seemed to have a genuine respect for the integrity of his thoughts. She hadn't tried to pry any further when he fell silent, and he wondered if that was because she had something of her own to hide.

At any rate, he could wonder about it later, after the mission; he couldn't afford the distraction now. The base looked even more derelict from up close, as if it only remained intact out of habit, resisting disintegration by some invisible force of will. For a moment he entertained the hope that a ship so poorly maintained might also be poorly guarded, with too few personnel trying to patrol too large an area, but he didn't count on it.

"All right," he said, "I'm heading in." He guided the ship into the docking bay, preparing himself mentally in the last few moments before he landed.


	7. 07

**07**

At first, if not for faint signals indicating the presence of life somewhere above him, and a pervasive droning of machinery that resonated from deep beneath the floor, he might have assumed the entire base was deserted. He made his way through the rusting labyrinth of walkways and corridors and storage rooms leading from the docking bay without encountering a single guard. For once, the invisibility device and cloaking mechanism he had equipped before setting out seemed unnecessary; there was no one around to detect his presence, and they wouldn't have been able to see him in the near-total darkness of the corridors. He would have had the advantage there at any rate; his enhanced sensory abilities made darkness an asset rather than an obstacle. Cast in the feverish glow of his night-vision sensors, the interior of the base had an unreal quality, like a cheaply constructed virtual location on the AMN.

"Are you sure they gave you the right coordinates?" said Doctus over the interlink. "This place doesn't look very lively."

"There are life signs on the upper levels." They blinked faintly at the edges of his visual range, but he was too far away to determine anything more than their presence; he would have to get closer before he could analyze their individual signatures and try to match them with the data he had received on the hostages.

He searched the nearby storage rooms and found a working elevator to the rear of one of them. When he was sure the immediate area was clear, he used it to reach the deck above. This floor appeared deserted as well, but with signs of recent activity that had been absent from the lower decks. Now that he was within range, his sensors picked up more life forms, all of them headed in the same direction, towards the central part of the vessel.

"They appear to be gathering at a certain point," he said. "That might be where the hostages are."

"Careful," said Doctus, over a murmur of static in the back of his head. Ziggy had noticed an interference in their communications when he landed; now it seemed to be getting worse.

As he made his way among the upper levels of the base, his surroundings began to conform to a certain Ormus-like aesthetic that reminded him of Pleroma, although the two bases didn't have much else in common. The architecture had an ancient look, as if it would have been made out of stone if it were economical or practical to do so, and it made the presence of more recent technology seem anachronistic. Of course, recent was a relative term, as nearly every piece of equipment on board would have been manufactured before the collapse of the UMN.

He encountered the first two guards outside a control room, their uniforms and weapons highlighted in the violet glow of the monitors from a window facing out onto the hallway. Still concealed by the cloaking device, he managed to get close enough to hear their conversation.

"Is that it?" said the first. "That's all we have to do?"

"You heard our orders, Keil." He started down the hallway and waved for the other guard to join him. "Come on, we're late enough as it is; just leave it and it'll take care of itself."

"Magni, wait."

The second guard stopped. "What is it?"

"I feel ...." For a moment the first guard stared straight at the place where Ziggy was standing, long enough to make him wonder whether his camouflage had failed as it had done on Pleroma, but then the guard turned away with a dismissive shake of his head that looked like an attempt at concealing a shudder. "Listen, I've got a strange feeling about all this. What's this New Pilgrimage business got to do with the test data anyway?"

"Hey, keep it down, will you?" Magni glanced around restlessly, as if he also suspected an intruder on the premises. "You got a death wish? You've got some nerve questioning the will of the Executor. If our superiors heard you--"

"Right, I know." Keil bowed his head. "It's just that ... you wouldn't happen to know anything about this 'revelation' people have been talking about, would you? They say something's going to happen at the meeting today, and ever since those guests arrived ...."

"Keil, you need to stop listening to gossip in the mess hall and start paying more attention to the words of our savior. Having a little more respect for your orders wouldn't hurt, either." He had raised his voice and spoke in an affected manner, perhaps for the benefit of whomever he thought was listening in on their conversation. He gestured down the hall again. "We're wasting time here."

"Ah, right. Sorry." He fell into step with Magni, and the two headed off down the corridor.

Ziggy started after the guards, but Doctus stopped him at the door to the control room. "You mind having a look in there?" she said.

Collecting data on the organization wasn't one of his objectives for the mission, but he walked over and stood in front of one of the terminals. "It's running some sort of program. What do you want me to do?"

"Just stay there for a minute," said Doctus. "I'm analyzing your visual data. Do you notice anything unusual about the machine itself?"

He tried to take a closer look without moving his eyes away from the screen. "No, what do you .... Wait a minute. This is a new model. It couldn't have been manufactured more than a few months ago."

"That's right," said Doctus. "A Nov-OS Technologies AMT-56670. That company didn't even exist before the UMN collapsed, and this particular model dates to right around the time the column to Patmos was first opened. Of course, that unit will have been heavily modified on the inside; it'd have to be, to run that program."

"I see what you mean. That doesn't appear to be a standard network interface. Can you tell what it's doing?"

"Well, it's definitely transmitting something, but that address doesn't appear to correspond with any known location on the AMN. Looks like the data itself's under a lot of protection; whatever they're sending, it's probably pretty damn important. Do you still have the backup drive I gave you?"

He retrieved the portable storage device she had pressed into his hand during their brief meeting at the docking colony--another one of Scientia's classified devices, the infinity symbol barely visible in relief on its surface. "How does it work?"

"Just connect it somewhere and it'll start copying automatically."

He searched the casing of the terminal for an available port, and inserted the drive when he found one. "I find it necessary to remind you that this isn't part of my official assignment."

"I'm well aware of the precise nature of your assignment. Don't worry, I'll make sure you receive compensation from Scientia for assisting our research. If I'm not mistaken, it's the only payment you'll be getting out of this, isn't it?"

Ignoring her, he checked his visual field. The guards' signals had vanished, and those of a larger, slower-moving group he had observed earlier were moving out of range. When the drive had finished copying, he resumed his pursuit until he reached a vast open space beneath a central walkway that spanned the room like a bridge. Crates and storage containers had been stacked near the walls, and he ducked behind one of them to observe the procession as it passed overhead.

The signals filed out along the walkway, drawing a dotted line across his sight. A few men and women in uniform marched at either end of the column, those at the rear goading the plain-clothed people ahead of them when they failed to keep up with the pace set by those in front.

"That's not the Patmos Delegation," said Doctus, in the same instant he realized it himself.

"No, it isn't." He studied the figures half-marching, half-stumbling along the walkway, magnifying the image in his view until he could see their faces, their heads bowed in reverence, the medals and prayer beads clasped in their hands. Some of the younger ones clung to the adults' sides, gazing around in a more primal form of awe. For a moment his lingering unease sharpened into a stab of recognition at the back of his mind, but he pushed away the memory before he could tell what it was. "What are civilians and children doing in a terrorist base?"

"My guess is that they're members of the Immigrant Fleet who went into hiding after the incidents on Michtam two years ago."

He considered for a moment. "So we're infiltrating a refugee camp."

"Well, a refugee camp that also happens to serve as the headquarters of an anti-Federation terrorist organization, yes."

"I see. This ... complicates things." That was the problem with planning for the worst-case scenario; there were limits to what he could imagine, and reality could always manage to be worse. The static on the line gnawed at his thoughts. "They seem to be headed for the same place everyone else is. I guess we should follow them."

"You mean you should follow them. Not a hell of a lot I can do from out here."

"Ah. Right." He waited until the procession had gone on, then he made his way to the upper level and crept out along the walkway. In the next room, the signals he had been tracking joined others as they arrived from other parts of the base, and they all continued as a group. He kept following, maintaining a safe distance to avoid being noticed; the incident with the guards earlier had reminded him that even though he had camouflage, it didn't hurt to take precautions. He recalled the guard Keil's gaze passing through him, the bizarre sensation of making eye contact with someone who couldn't see his eyes. Sometimes human intuition picked up on signals the most advanced detection systems missed.

He followed the group ahead of him deeper into the base. Several times they met up with other groups and reformed into a larger entity, until at last he estimated a crowd of a few hundred people gathered in a large room near the center of the ship, where they appeared to have stopped moving.

"I think I've found where they're meeting," he said. "I'm going to try to get inside without being seen."

"Sorry, could you repeat that?" The words barely surfaced out of a sea of noise. "I can't hear you very well, there's--"

"Doctus? I said I'm going in. Are you there? Doctus!"

Static.

He sighed, wondering if he should disable the interlink; the noise in his head was distracting. But he decided against it, in case she managed to get through later.

He examined his surroundings. He had stopped in a dimly lighted hallway with a door at either end, with lights set into the walls at intervals to give the effect of torches or candelabra. Through the open doorway at the far end he made out an enclosure like the interior of a church, an aisle leading to a domed vault, stained-glass light slicing down from somewhere above the altar. The people he could see from here had their backs to the entrance.

He moved closer, fighting some nameless dread that held him back at every step. The vague sense of unease he had felt at the beginning of the mission was overwhelming now; like the static in his mind, it had grown too pervasive to ignore. It was just like Michtam two years ago, and like the first time, a hundred years before that. The chapel here didn't bear much resemblance to the cathedral in Archon, but perhaps the similarities had been enough to jog his memory.

He willed himself to calm down. He knew it was irrational to react this way; it was one of the reasons why he had considered having his memories erased, since he often performed poorly on missions that reminded him of his previous life. Logically, it should have been the reverse; he had encountered situations like this before, so experience should have taught him to remain calm. But all he could think about were his previous failures. Pushing aside his fears as best he could, he approached the doorway.

No one saw him as he entered the chapel and stepped behind a pillar framing a darkened side-aisle. No one watched the entrance; they all stood facing the altar, singing a hymn in a language that sounded like the Latin phrases Doctus sometimes quoted. He made his way along the aisle until he stood in the shadows behind the vault; from there he could see the hostages, kneeling at the base of the altar with their heads bowed, although they didn't appear to be restrained in any way. A man in the robes of an Ormus priest stood in front of them, and when the hymn subsided to an expectant silence, the priest stepped forward and addressed the congregation.

"Behold, my friends, the moment we have long awaited is upon us. For at last we shall ascend to the promised land; at last we shall depart from this condemned world, which has rejected our very existence and denied the truth of our beliefs. The one who speaks to us from the promised land will guide us there, but now we must lend him our wills, so that his work may be done ...."

While the crowd was distracted, Ziggy approached the back of the altar and tried to get the hostages' attention. The nearest, a woman in her late twenties with limp bedraggled hair falling across her face, jerked around when he touched her arm.

"Don't be alarmed," he said, keeping his voice low. "I'm an agent working for the Federation government. I'm going to try to get you out of here."

"Oh ...." The hostage lolled her head upright and stared through him with glazed eyes and a vague, fixed smile. "That's a shame. We were about to go with them ...."

He backed away in shock, as if the woman's gaze had burned him. The static in his head had risen to a piercing whine and he couldn't think clearly enough to revise his strategy. He retreated behind a nearby arch, waiting for his regulatory mechanisms to take effect and slow down his racing heartbeat.

"The rulers of Babylon have sealed the way to our homeland and denied us passage," he heard the priest saying over the rasp of static and the oceanic roar in his skull, "but we no longer need to rely on their empty promises and false mercies to reclaim our heritage. They wish to negotiate with us, but how can we reason with them when they are drunk on the blood of our saints and martyrs, when they have driven themselves to madness with their own debauchery? And now the enemy has come within our midst, and in this most sacred hour those who would destroy us shall bear witness to our salvation. For the one who will lead us has come to show us the way to the promised land. Come, loyal followers of his ways, and let us prepare to depart."

Silence entered the room like a living presence, and even the air seemed to waver, shimmering at the edges as if the space itself were a mirage, an illusion about to disperse. The speaker raised his arms toward the light that filled the vault, and the crowd--refugees and soldiers alike--hung suspended on an indrawn breath.

The light enveloped them, erased them in an instant, without a sound, and he didn't comprehend what was happening until it was over.

The static in his mind had gone, leaving his thoughts stranded in the sudden calm like fragments of clouds in a washed-out sky. They drifted there, a few isolated wisps of cognition too insubstantial to grasp. On an impulse he got up, walked over to the altar, stared at the crumpled bodies of the hostages; the priest had dissolved into the light along with the rest of the congregation. The Patmos Delegation might have witnessed whatever had just happened, but they hadn't survived to tell about it.

As he turned away something caught hold of his leg, and he glanced down at the hand gripping his ankle, the outstretched arm, the eyes staring up at him through the glassy sheen of agony. It seemed he had been mistaken in assuming all the hostages had died at once. He recognized the young man whose profile he had reviewed at his briefing, the one who had delivered the terrorists' message in the audio broadcast, and with the recognition came a renewed stab of apprehension, as if he had suddenly found the object of all his fears from the outset. He had never seen the man before, but that verse, those words--

He saw the strain in the young man's face, realized the hostage was trying to speak again. Ignoring the instinct that told him to pull away from the straining fingers and run as far and fast as he could from this place, he bent down to listen.

"_The beast ... that you saw ..._" gasped the young man, and once he had managed to utter the first few words at great effort, he continued in a rush, "_was, and is not, and will ascend out of the bottomless pit and go to perdition. And those who dwell on the earth will marvel, whose names are not written in the Book of Life from the foundation of the world, when they see the beast that was, and is not, and yet is._"

The young man closed his eyes and sighed as if he had just fallen asleep, and his fingers eased their grasp.

Ziggy walked away from the altar and sat down, surprised at how calm he felt, as if he had lost the capacity to feel anything at all.

"Ziggurat 8, do you hear me? What's going on in there? Are you all right?"

It seemed a long time before he recognized the voice, and he didn't know how long she had been trying to reach him. "I'm here." He didn't know what else to say.

"Oh, thank ...." Through the interlink he sensed her relief, an impression that fell between an audible sigh and a momentary spike of emotion, subsiding in an instant. "My sensors just picked up some kind of massive transfer to the imaginary domain. What the hell happened? Never mind, I'll be there in a second. Hang on."

She made her way down the aisle in swift deliberate strides, hurrying without appearing to be in a hurry, pausing only to examine the contorted figures sprawled beneath the altar. Then she walked over to where he sat. He lifted his head as she approached and stared at her without comprehension.

"Sorry, looks like I got here too late."

"It's all right." He heard himself respond automatically, as if reading from a script; he didn't even know what the words meant anymore, only that they seemed like the appropriate ones for the situation. "You wouldn't have been able to do anything."

"Maybe not for them." She held out her arm. "But for you ... at least, this time, it's a different story."

He gazed at the outstretched hand, then into the lenses that concealed her eyes, at the lighted spots embedded in the dark glass. For a moment he forgot where he was, forgot what he was looking at, and the lights became stars glimpsed from the dark end of a long tunnel, and a staggering vertigo overcame him, and then he blinked and recovered his bearings. "What do you mean, 'this time'?"

Doctus shook her head. "Forget it. Come on, let's get out of here."


	8. 08

**08**

When the call showed up on Juli's connection gear the next day, she didn't hesitate to answer. "Well?"

"Well what?"

Juli sighed. "You know what I mean, Doctus. The data you had Jan ... Ziggurat 8 retrieve from the terrorist base. Were you able to analyze it?"

"To some extent, yes, and it's a good thing he got it out of there when he did. All the terminals on board were set to upload their contents and then wipe themselves clean, so the recovery crew that came back for the bodies probably didn't find anything even if they bothered to look."

"Which might be a good thing," said Juli. "I'm not so sure I trust the Federation government lately. Are we the only ones who know about this?"

"Aside from the Scientia personnel who worked on the analysis, yes. It's pretty badly fragmented, and some of it is written in a code we don't understand, but we did learn some very interesting things from the rest of it."

"Such as?"

"I'm afraid I don't have time to explain it all right now, but I think we may have found your secret network. I'll send you the full analysis so you can look over it yourself. Oh, and it might be in your best interest to discuss it with Jan when he's firing on all cylinders again. How's he doing, by the way?"

Juli's breath caught, and she turned away from the screen. "He's all right. You know he was in shock after the incident at the base. But he's been undergoing maintenance in the AMN lab, and he doesn't seem to have sustained any permanent damage. MOMO is with him now."

"That's good to hear. I figured he'd snap out of it eventually. He's lucky to have you and MOMO to look after him."

"Well, we all look out for each other, these days." She paused, realizing something. "Did you just call him Jan?"

It was the first time Juli had seen Doctus caught off guard, and her startled expression passed in an instant. "Isn't that what you call him?"

"Well, yes, but ...." Juli hesitated, and decided not to press the issue. If any course of action was in her best interest, it probably didn't involve putting Doctus on the defensive. "Do you really think it's wise to discuss the data with him so soon after the incident?"

"I think it would be unwise not to. If there's one thing I've learned in my time at Scientia, it's that you can't protect people from the truth. Not forever, anyway. Not if you want to earn their trust. He trusts you, doesn't he?"

"I never really thought of it that way, but yes, I suppose he does."

"Then you owe it to him to tell him, no matter how painful the truth may be. Otherwise, you might end up regretting it." She paused for a few moments too long--enough for Juli to guess that she spoke from experience--but then she continued hurriedly, as if to compensate for letting down her guard again. "I don't suppose you've heard of the Ambassador Lock-Up Incident? The Pilgrimage Meeting of 4667?"

"No, but ... wait, didn't those incidents have something to do with a case he worked on in his past life?" Juli vaguely remembered having read about them when she reviewed his files in consideration for the Pleroma mission three years ago. It occurred to her to wonder how Doctus knew, but Doctus had access to all kinds of information through Scientia; she could easily have downloaded his personal records, even the classified ones. Now that Juli thought about it, that was probably how Doctus had found out his real name.

"That's right, and not just any case. It was the last case he ever investigated."

"Oh." Juli forced a tight smile. "You mean the one that resulted in his suicide. Well, I'm sure he'd love to be reminded of that."

"I'm afraid he's had something of an unwelcome reminder already. There are uncanny similarities between those two incidents and what happened in Patmos yesterday. Look up the case history if you don't believe me. The official accounts are pretty heavily censored, but you'll get the idea."

"I'll take your word for it," said Juli. "But the events you're referring to must have happened more than a century ago. Do you really think there's a relevant connection here?"

"I don't know, but I certainly don't think it's just a coincidence. Either this is some kind of copycat crime, some history buff's idea of a sick joke, or .... Well, let's hope it's just someone's idea of a joke."

"If it is, it's not funny."

"I never said I shared their sense of humor. But I'd prefer that were the case over just about every other explanation I can think of. For now, I'll get back to you if we figure out how to analyze the rest of that data. I understand MOMO is busy at the moment, but when you see her, would you mind asking her to get in touch with me? Tell her I have a little homework assignment for her to do."

Juli nodded. "Of course. I'll let her know."

* * *

When Juli had finished her work for the day, she left her office in the SOCE complex and headed over to the AMN center. The building had a suite of maintenance labs on its lower level; Ziggy used them whenever he had to undergo any procedure more extensive than his routine maintenance at home, or when he was due for a complete diagnostic scan to ensure all his systems were working properly.

Taking the elevator downstairs, she located the room they were using, pressed the call button by the door, and waited. After a few seconds the door slid open and MOMO stepped out into the hallway. "Mommy? You're here early."

"I tried to get my work done as quickly as I could," said Juli. Without realizing it, she had lowered her voice to the level people tended to use in hospitals or when someone was asleep nearby. "How is he?"

"I think he's feeling better," said MOMO in the same near-whisper. "He just woke up before you got here. His readings are back to normal, and he's not all ... quiet like he was when he came back from the mission. That's good, right?"

"I certainly hope so." Juli took both of MOMO's hands in her own and looked into her eyes. She and MOMO were about the same height now--if anything, MOMO stood a few inches taller--and it felt strange not having to bend down anymore to make eye contact. "Thank you for taking care of him. Is it all right if I go inside?"

"Um ... well ...." A worried look crossed MOMO's face, but then she gave a hesitant nod. "Sure, I don't think he'd mind. He probably wants to see you."

"All right. By the way, Doctus asked if you would call her when you get the chance. She said she might have an assignment for you, something to do with the data we recovered from--well, you know," she concluded abruptly, with an anxious glance at the closed door to the lab.

MOMO followed her gaze to the door. "I understand. I'll go talk to her now." She headed back down the hallway, and Juli stared after her until she disappeared around a corner. Then she keyed her own access code into a panel beside the door and went inside.

She found him seated in the maintenance unit in the center of the room, not leaning against the back of the chair as usual, but doubled forward, with his elbows propped on his knees and his head in his hands. His shoulders rose and fell in time with his breathing and with the steady pulse of the machines around him.

"Jan. It's me."

"I know." He didn't look up.

"MOMO ... said you were doing better."

He nodded, taking his hands away from his face. "I didn't want to worry her."

Swallowing hard, Juli turned toward one of the monitors and pretended to study it intently; it was easier to see him rendered into numbers and abstract data than to look him in the eyes now. "Jan, I ... I'm sorry. This was all my fault. If I hadn't ...."

"It's not your fault. You might as well say I was to blame for taking on an assignment I couldn't handle. I thought I knew my own limitations, but it seems I overestimated myself."

The data on the screen grew blurred and watery and she blinked to clear her eyes. "You didn't know," she said. "None of us had any idea what we were getting into. If we had, we all would have made better choices. Even so, I feel personally responsible for my part in what happened. I sent you into a dangerous situation unprepared, and if I hadn't been so impulsive, so anxious to prove I had a solution to a problem we knew almost nothing about, you never would have had to ...." But the knot in her throat kept her from saying more, and she tried to force it down as the screen in front of her wavered into a smear of greenish light.

From behind, she heard him get up, the shifting and settling of his weight followed by the heavy thud of his steps on the tiled floor, and she pulled her eyes away from the screen and turned to find him standing over her. He reached out with his right hand, and his gloved fingers traced the line of her jaw and passed lightly over the curve of her mouth as if urging her to silence. He closed his eyes and let his arm fall back to his side. "I don't blame you for what happened. You chose what you thought was the best course of action based on the information you had, and I did the same."

Juli swallowed again, but the solid thing blocking her throat hadn't moved. She wanted to thank him, but the words never came. Instead she leaned into him and he drew his arm around her. When she could speak again, she said, "There's something else I have to tell you. A few things, actually. And I'm afraid they might be hard for you to hear."

"Go ahead."

She nodded. "I got the report from the recovery crew. There was nothing you could have done to save those people. The terrorists never had any intention of keeping them alive; it seems they were planning to kill them along with the refugees and themselves. Even if you had managed to get them off the ship, it's not likely they would have survived for more than a few hours."

He said nothing in return, but she felt something tighten in his chest as he held her, so maybe he had already known or suspected as much.

"Jan, they ...." She hesitated, afraid to go on. "The hostages had all been brainjacked. Probably not long after they were taken prisoner, judging by the autopsy results. We still have no idea how it happened." Hacking into another user's mind was not only illegal, it was also next to impossible under the new security measures programmed into the AMN.

He was silent again, and didn't speak until she was convinced he wasn't going to. "I know."

His posture had changed, as if he had withdrawn from her without moving. She stepped back and tried to meet his gaze, but he was staring at something in the distance, something beyond the walls of this room, perhaps beyond this place and time altogether. And what she saw in his eyes terrified her. She had been frightened when she saw him after the mission, flat-eyed and staring at nothing, his expression so completely devoid of affect it made his usual manner seem theatrical. Now she wasn't sure which was worse--his shock or the way he looked now.

She tried to continue as if she hadn't noticed. "I also received word from Doctus, and based on Scientia's analysis of the data you recovered, it appears the terrorist attacks we've been seeing aren't the work of isolated groups. They're part of a network that's being coordinated somehow, by some other entity, although it's not clear yet who's behind this or what their motive is."

"I had suspected that as well." He relaxed his stance slightly, and when she looked again his face had lost that terrible distant gaze.

"There's another thing. Ah ... I wasn't going to bring this up, but Doctus thought .... I mean, she seemed to think it would be appropriate to mention it to you, since you've had experience with something like this before. She said there were similarities between yesterday's incident and a case you were investigating in your former life. I'm not at all convinced there's a connection," she hastened to add, "but there's the possibility your past experience might come in useful somehow, especially if this pattern of attacks continues." Juli took a step back, searching his face for any sign of distress, but he showed no reaction at all to what she had just said.

"I understand. I can't promise I'll be of much help in that regard, since my memories of that time are still fragmented, and I can't retrieve them at will. But if my experience can be used to prevent other incidents from occurring, I'll contribute whatever information I can recall."

Juli nodded, biting her lip. She hadn't expected him to respond rationally, but maybe he'd recovered control of himself, called himself back from the edge of whatever abyss he'd been staring into a few moments before. "Thank you," she said. "I know this must be hard for you, but please remember that you aren't alone anymore. I'm here, and so is MOMO. You've done so much for us, and the least we can do in return is to give you our support, for whatever it's worth."

"It's more than enough. I appreciate it." For the first time in several minutes he lowered his gaze and made eye contact with her. "But it sounds as though you and MOMO still have a difficult time ahead of you as well. I'd rather you focused on protecting yourselves instead of worrying about me."

She gave a desperate hiccup of a laugh and pulled him closer. "I can't not worry about you. I have to worry. So, please ... let me protect you for once."

"Juli."

"What?"

"You don't need to do anything more than what you've always done. If it weren't for you and MOMO, I ...."


	9. 09

**09**

It was the first time MOMO had spoken to Doctus in a few weeks, since before the operation. Doctus hadn't been among the Scientia agents who remained with the AMN Committee on the _Dämmerung_, and had left citing other obligations elsewhere.

"Well, you're quite the sophisticated young lady," Doctus said when she answered the call. Until she mentioned it, MOMO forgot that Doctus hadn't seen her new frame yet.

MOMO felt herself blushing. "I'm still getting used to it. I just came back from Vector the other day."

"So I heard. I know it's a bit late, but happy birthday. I have something for you, though I'm afraid it's not a very good present. You may have some difficulty opening it."

"That's okay," said MOMO. "It's the data you got from Ziggy, isn't it? Mommy said you might need my help."

"Oh, she told you. Well, we ran into a little trouble when we tried to decode it, but we thought if you could figure it out, you might be able to use it to analyze the network they've been hiding behind our backs all this time. Did your mother also tell you about that?"

MOMO shook her head. "So there really is a shadow network? She mentioned it before, but she didn't tell me you found evidence."

"What we have here is practically a smoking gun," said Doctus. "From what I can tell, it appears they've built a network that operates entirely in the imaginary domain, like the old UMN. But the programming is different from both the former UMN protocols and the new ones we developed to operate the AMN. We were hoping that, since you wrote a significant part of the AMN operating system, you might be able to shed some light on the way this other network functions."

"I'd be glad to take a look at it. Although if it's written in a completely different code, I'm not sure how well I'll be able to understand it."

"I know." Doctus smiled grimly. "That's what I expected. Just do your best."

MOMO nodded. "I will."

When the conversation ended she headed back down the hall to the lab. She thought about going right in, but decided her mother and Ziggy probably needed some privacy, so she waited on a bench in the hallway until they emerged a few minutes later.

"Oh, were you waiting very long?" said Juli.

"Not too long." MOMO started up from the bench. "Just a few minutes." She looked over at Ziggy. He seemed a little calmer now than when he first woke up, and at least he no longer appeared to be trying to conceal his distress. She wondered if he knew that she could sense it, and not just because of her observational functions; she could tell intuitively when he was upset, although she rarely mentioned it to him because he didn't seem to want anyone else to know. The last time she had seen him this distraught was on Michtam two years ago, but she had kept quiet then too, even after Jr. remarked on it.

And there was something else, something she had noticed while taking care of his maintenance earlier today, that troubled her even more. She had intended to ask him about it when he recovered consciousness, but then Juli had arrived, and MOMO didn't want to bring it up in front of her. Somehow she suspected her mother knew already anyway, and the thought that they might have kept it secret from MOMO upset her nearly as much as finding out about it herself.

The next time they had some time alone, in the apartment that evening, she asked him.

They were in the kitchen, MOMO chopping vegetables at the counter near the stove while Ziggy stood by the doorway opposite. Most nights he kept her company while she made dinner, although his main contribution consisted in staying as far as possible from the official proceedings without physically leaving the room. On the rare occasions when MOMO had invited him to help and he had reluctantly agreed, MOMO and Juli ended up having a laugh about the results and ordering take-out. But at least she enjoyed his companionship while she worked, and sometimes she liked when it was just the two of them together; it reminded her of the time they had spent on the _Elsa_. On most nights, as on this one, Juli had other matters to attend to, and she retreated into her private office from the time they got home until Ziggy or MOMO called on her for dinner.

"Ziggy, is everything all right?" MOMO set aside the knife and stepped back from the counter, rubbing her eyes with the back of her hand. Cutting up onions always interfered with her sensors. "You haven't said much since we got home."

He looked up as if startled out of a trance. "Sorry. I was just thinking."

"Oh ... I didn't mean to bother you."

"It's all right," said Ziggy. "I've had a lot on my mind."

"I understand." Something nudged her ankle and she glanced down to find Alby sniffing at the floor around her feet. She frowned. "Alby, you're getting in the way." The dog ignored her until he encountered a slice of onion that had fallen from the cutting board, and then he backed off, bristling, as if it had bitten him in the nose.

MOMO giggled, momentarily forgetting her concern. Picking up the knife again, she scraped the onions into a pan on the stove. The faded image of a white rabbit beamed up at her, making her smile in spite of herself. chaos had bought her the frying pan during a shopping expedition to the Kukai Foundation, and MOMO had used it so often in the last two years that the picture of Bunnie had nearly worn off.

She almost pulled a chair over to reach the spice cabinet, then remembered she didn't have to do that anymore. Pulling down a few containers, she measured out the contents as Shion had demonstrated for her in the _Elsa_'s kitchen, the night before the expedition to Lost Jerusalem was set to depart. It was the last time they had all sat together in the ship's diner, Jr. and Shion and Allen and the _Elsa_ crew and the others, everyone who had returned from Michtam, the absent places at the table standing in for those who hadn't. In honor of the occasion, Shion had made her favorite curry, and MOMO had volunteered to help.

"See, now," Shion had said as they stirred in the last few ingredients together, "you'll always remember how to do it, so you can make it all by yourself. By the time we meet again you'll be a pro at it."

And she was right, at least about the first part. MOMO still remembered her instructions clearly, along with everything else from that evening--the laughter and good-natured insults and toasts to the success of the _Elsa_'s mission and the AMN project--and the following morning, when they all stood in the warm light in the docking area inside the _Dämmerung_ to exchange their goodbyes, and MOMO had leaned over the railing to wave as the _Elsa_ took off and kept waving even when she couldn't see the ship anymore, because she knew that if she stopped she would have to accept that they were really gone--

MOMO swallowed hard, suddenly glad her back was turned. In the pan on the stove the onions had turned clear and yellowish from the curry seasoning. She stirred them again and leaned over to check on the rice.

"MOMO. If you don't mind my asking, is there something on your mind as well?"

She dropped the lid on the pot of rice and turned around quickly. "Well, um ... I just thought ... I mean, if you wanted to talk to me about anything, of course I wouldn't mind ... that is ...." She paused to wipe her eyes on her sleeve; the onions were still irritating her sensors. "It's just that when I was doing your maintenance, I noticed ... um ... and well, I was just wondering, are you thinking of undergoing life extension again?"

That wasn't how she had wanted to say it, but she didn't know how else to phrase the question without admitting to herself what she wasn't prepared to admit.

She guessed the answer when he didn't respond right away. "Oh," she murmured, staring at the floor. "Is that why you said you wanted me to know how to protect myself?"

"I've always wanted you to be able to protect yourself. And I know you're more than capable, I just ...."

"It's okay," she said. "You don't have to explain. I sort of knew already anyway."

Ziggy shook his head as if he had wanted to say more. "I'm sorry for not telling you sooner. Your mother and I have been aware of it, but we didn't--"

"--want me to worry. I know," she said, feeling hurt. "I wish you'd told me. How much longer do you think you'll ...." She could hardly say the words; she had to ask, but she didn't really want to know.

"We estimate a few more years at least. With proper maintenance, it could be even more than that. Don't worry," he added, walking over and placing a hand on her arm, "I don't plan on going anywhere yet. I may be getting older, but this body is still in pretty good condition."

MOMO nodded without raising her head. She wanted to look at him, but she didn't want him to see the hurt and disappointment in her eyes. An inner voice scolded her for getting so upset; she was an adult now, and she should know better. So why didn't she feel any different?

"MOMO, the ... uh ...." He pointed helplessly at the stove.

"Oh no!" She turned around, grabbing for the pan handle, and yanked the burning onions off the heat. "This smells awful. I hope I didn't ruin it."

"If so, we can just tell your mother it was my fault again."

MOMO started to laugh in spite of herself, her throat already stinging from the smoke. She looked up, wiping her streaming eyes. "Stupid onions," she said, and tried to smile.

"I don't think Alby approves of them either." Ziggy nodded toward the dog, who seemed to be trying to cover his eyes and nose simultaneously with his forepaws; finally Alby got up and trotted out of the room, looking affronted.

"Is something burning?" called Juli from the opposite end of the apartment.

"It's okay, Mommy," MOMO shouted back. "We're getting take-out."

"Again? Oh, all right." A few moments later she appeared in the doorway, wincing and trying hard not to laugh. "Honestly, Jan, your presence in the kitchen should be classified as a fire hazard. MOMO, why do you encourage him?"

"But he didn't--" MOMO began, then shook her head. After yesterday, she just wanted to believe that everything would go back to normal again.

* * *

Later that night she lay in her bed listening to the distant noise of the city. Her window was open in an attempt to chase out the last of the burnt-onion smell, and the breeze felt cold on her forehead. Sometimes when the wind changed direction, it brought the sharp earthy scent of the flower beds in the yard and the sound of her mother and Ziggy talking in hushed voices. MOMO tried not to listen too closely, but she caught an occasional word or phrase, not enough to make sense of the entire conversation.

"--only asking if you would consider it," said Juli. "I don't want to pressure you, but I hope you'll give it some thought."

MOMO wondered if they were talking about having his consciousness transferred into a carbon-based Realian body for temporary use when he wasn't on a mission. If he had a Realian frame, he could go on living even after his original body ceased to function. Juli had proposed it once or twice before, but each time Ziggy had insisted, patiently but firmly, that he wasn't interested. Lately Juli seemed to have dropped the matter, and now that MOMO had seen his maintenance results, she thought she knew why. Maybe Juli had accepted his intentions, or maybe she had just given up trying to change his mind. At any rate, that didn't seem to be what they were discussing now; Ziggy was saying something about his memories that MOMO didn't quite catch.

"I know you don't want to relive them," said Juli, "and I don't blame you. But if we managed to link them up somehow ...."

Then they started talking about the incident in Patmos, and MOMO wondered what Ziggy's memory had to do with the recent attacks. Was that why he had seemed so upset before? She made up her mind to ask Juli about it tomorrow; there was no reason for them to keep hiding things from her.

She tuned out the rest of the conversation, feeling bad enough already for listening to any of it. The room had grown cold, so she got up to shut the window before she went to sleep. Her mother and Ziggy still stood in the courtyard, their outlines hazy in the distant light of the city and the soft glow from inside the apartment. Seeing them together made her feel relieved and lonely at the same time. She wondered where the _Elsa_ was, and what Jr. was doing now.

Two years had passed since the last time she had seen him, and she wondered if he had changed as much as she had. She had hoped the time difference would give her a chance to catch up, to grow up in his absence so that when they met again he would see her as an equal instead of a child. But even after her operation, she didn't feel any different from before. She didn't know what growing up was supposed to feel like. Maybe it wasn't the same for Realians.

Restless, she walked to the mirror. In the half-light from the window, her reflection was a separate person, a stranger. She raised a hand, and the woman in the mirror did the same--a friendly, conciliatory gesture, but when she brought her fingertips to the surface she touched only cold smooth glass. Her heart raced, and for a moment she didn't know where she was, which one of her was the reflection, or whether she was even here at all. Maybe MOMO was the sleeping child they had put to rest in the storage capsule on the _Dämmerung_ after her operation. And if so, then who was here in this stranger's body, thinking these thoughts?

At Vector they had warned her to expect brief episodes of dissociation in the beginning, until her personality layer reconfigured to her new self-image, but she had never experienced the feeling so intensely. She recoiled from the mirror and sat down on the floor beside her bed with her knees gathered to her chest and her head burrowed in her arms, but she couldn't make herself small enough, not anymore, not small enough to disappear.

_This is normal,_ she thought, insistent over the hammering in her ears. To reassure herself, she tried to recall what the Third Division personnel had told her during her adjustment sessions. The 100 series units were designed to look and act like children; their operating systems were programmed to run inside a childlike frame, with no provisions built in for upgrades. _You're the prototype, so you'll set an example for the rest of them. You'll be the first to know what it's like to grow up._ When she agreed to the operation she had been eager to find out, and if she had considered at all the responsibilities involved, she had dismissed them without much thought. After all, hadn't she proven herself more than capable of handling responsibility when she took a leading role in the AMN project? Wasn't she already grown up on the inside, as Juli had said?

But now she wasn't sure she wanted to be an adult. She didn't want time to move any faster, away from this moment and everything that was familiar and dear to her--away from Ziggy and her mother and her friends and the world she knew. She didn't want to have to protect herself, and she didn't want to take on any more responsibilities, any more secrets, any more burdens. And she was ashamed of herself for having doubts. If she admitted them, even to herself, did that mean the operation had been a failure?

She got up and looked out the window again. The courtyard was empty, and no light came from the adjacent room. She hadn't noticed when Juli and Ziggy went inside, but she could detect their signals now, at rest in separate rooms across the hallway, and the steady pulse of their life signs reassured her.

Still too restless to sleep, she sat down at her desk and roused her computer out of standby mode. She called up the files she had received from Doctus and set her analytical programs to work on them, hoping the problem of interpreting the foreign code would distract her from her lingering worries. After a while, driven by a growing sense of urgency, she sneaked out to the kitchen, made herself a cup of tea--her mother's favorite kind, a preference MOMO had acquired from living with her--and returned to her room to continue the analysis.

About an hour later, she returned to the kitchen to refill her cup and heat up the leftovers from dinner, since she was starting to feel hungry again and had abandoned the prospect of getting any sleep. Staying up all night to work on a difficult problem was another habit she had learned from Juli.


	10. 10

**10**

The Novus Ordo Seclorum research complex on Fifth Jerusalem had served as his base of operations for over a year. He appreciated the security as much as the opportunity to return to his work without the Federation breathing down his neck.

According to official records, Dr. Sellers no longer existed. Reports had confirmed his disappearance at the time Abel's Ark consumed the tactical warship _Merkabah_ two years ago. But if that were true, he had been awfully busy for a nonexistent person.

Dmitri Yuriev had sent him to the _Merkabah_ to create a diversion without providing any means for his escape. A different sort of person might have interpreted the directive as a death sentence and gone down with the ship, but Sellers valued his life and his research more than he valued his loyalties. Since he hadn't received any further instructions from Yuriev, he had gone ahead and planned his own escape route. He knew of a certain U-TIC agent who had infiltrated the Federation Fleet under the command of the Salvator faction, and as Sellers already held a great deal of influence with Ormus, he had no difficulty arranging for a Federation vessel to slip in amidst the confusion of the surrounding battle and retrieve him from the _Merkabah_.

It was the aftermath that had proven difficult. The Federation ship that had rescued him barely escaped the disappearance phenomenon, and when the UMN collapsed they had ended up stranded hundreds of light-years away from the nearest settled planet. During the months of isolation that followed, some of the Federation soldiers on board, convinced they were the only survivors of the end of the world, had gone insane with despair, killing themselves or their comrades in wanton eruptions of violence. Sellers had managed to survive because he lived on the edge of madness anyway, and learning how to balance there had prevented him from being pushed over.

Eventually he'd led a mutiny against the ship's commander, the same U-TIC agent who had saved his life on the _Merkabah_. The agent had outlived his usefulness, and Sellers felt no great remorse at eliminating him and taking over the ship himself; after that, it was only a matter of time before they were rescued by another division of the Fleet. As soon as the necessary transfer columns were reestablished, the Federation had sent out the remaining fraction of its military in search of survivors. Sellers managed to disguise his identity until he could make contact with another group of Ormus sympathizers in the government, and he had spent the rest of that year on the run, evading detection and traveling from one Ormus safe house to the next.

When he received the offer from Nov-OS in the midst of the anti-Ormus hearings, he had accepted it without a second thought. He would just as soon have accepted an offer from Vector or the government, if they'd promised to grant him amnesty. The identity of his employer didn't concern him as long as he got to continue his research, and the fugitive lifestyle he had led for the past year had rendered that impossible. Nov-OS was a relatively new company, at least in its present configuration. It had formed as the result of a merger between the remnants of Hyams and certain other companies previously owned by Vector, and rumor held that the company had already developed its own UMN-based network while the AMN was still in its prototype stage. At any rate, the NSN--Nov-OS's internal corporate network--was now among the largest registered networks in the Federation, even though only a fraction of its true extent had been disclosed to the AMN Administrative Bureau and the regulating agencies in Parliament. The undisclosed portion extended much further; only Sellers and one or two other members of Nov-OS's board of directors had any idea how far. They concealed it because it extended well beyond the limits on network size set out by the AMN Bureau, and because revealing the full extent of the network would have been tantamount to revealing the company's true affiliation and intention.

Officially, Nov-OS was Vector's largest competitor; it had risen in opposition to Vector's centuries-long monopoly on nearly every marketable commodity in the star cluster, and it held the position that a corporation effectively run by the leaders of a former anti-UMN terrorist group like Scientia was no longer acting in the best interests of the public, even after Scientia began dismantling Vector's monopoly from within and distributing its non-essential holdings to smaller independent companies. As for Nov-OS's own ties with Vector, and by extension its former dealings with Ormus, the company's board of directors had disavowed all such connections, publicly expelling a few convenient scapegoats from their ranks in an act of corporate contrition. They had chosen a name--"the new order of the ages"--to signify their separation from the past as much as their commitment to rebuilding the world.

Unofficially, the company held to Vector's true objectives--those known only to Wilhelm and a few higher-ranking personnel--more faithfully than Vector did. Sellers didn't bother with those objectives, and concerned himself with company politics only insofar as they had a direct influence on his research. His current project was close to surpassing even Mizrahi's work: at last, after a lifetime of struggling in the shadow of that old dead madman, Sellers was about to cast his own shadow in the light of history.

He was analyzing the final reports from the Patmos facility when the Executor called.

_Executor_ wasn't his official title within the company. On the board of directors, he was the Senior Network Adviser, a gross understatement of his actual role in creating the NSN. The Executor had constructed most of the network himself, using techniques unknown even to the former Vector programming staff who now formed the core of Nov-OS's communications department. Sellers had never met the Executor in person, and he knew of no one who had, so naturally rumors abounded. People speculated that the Executor had no physical form and existed only within the AMN or the NSN, that he was an artificial consciousness or one of the Designer Children engineered for affinity with the network. His refusal to confirm, deny, or acknowledge any of the rumors only strengthened their credibility, as did his insistence on remaining anonymous; he concealed his name and location from the public, and when his presence was required during board meetings, he modified the appearance of his holographic avatar to obscure his features.

The only thing he didn't keep secret were his present associations, incriminating as they were. It was common knowledge within the company that the Executor had been a protégé of Cardinal Heinlein and, like his predecessor, served a dual role as corporate and religious leader, coordinating the Ormus splinter groups that received aid from Nov-OS. The followers of Ormus placed him somewhere on the continuum between prophet, messiah, and god. He sometimes referred to himself as the "Executor of the Will," and although he had never specified whose will he intended to carry out, Sellers had a few good guesses.

"Dr. Sellers." The Executor appeared on the screen as a black silhouette edged with a dim violet glow, superimposed over the data from the Patmos report. Like all higher-ranking Nov-OS personnel, he could bypass normal calling procedures and broadcast his message directly to any terminal on the network, without waiting for the receiving party to accept the connection. Unlike the other personnel with that privilege, he used it by default instead of for urgent messages only. Sellers found the habit unnerving, and had the distinct impression that the Executor enjoyed catching him by surprise and eavesdropping on his files.

"What is it, Senior Network Adviser?" Personally, Sellers hated the Executor. There was something unpleasantly familiar about his condescending attitude and the God act, something that reminded Sellers of his last employer. For a while, Sellers had even suspected that the Executor was Yuriev himself; he wouldn't have put it beyond the stubborn bastard to find his way back to this dimension somehow, and he kept waiting for the Executor to reproach him for abandoning the _Merkabah_, but he never did. Whether that meant he didn't want to reveal his identity or he was someone else entirely, Sellers didn't know. For the sake of retaining his own position within the company, Sellers kept quiet and pretended to suspect nothing. If it was Yuriev's intention to announce his return, he would wait for the right moment to stage a dramatic entrance, and Sellers had no intention of interfering. Especially since he didn't know whether Yuriev had achieved his goals, or what kind of power he had now.

But he still wasn't convinced it was Yuriev, either. Skulking around on the network and consorting with Ormus--it didn't seem like Yuriev's style.

"I see you received the reports from Patmos." The voice, at least, wasn't Yuriev's, although it did sound like the voice of someone who enjoyed hearing himself speak--a street preacher who had become enraptured with his own sermon, so absorbed in his own convictions that anyone who stood around listening risked conversion. But then, Sellers amended himself, hardly anyone preached on street corners anymore, not when they could reach a much larger congregation without even leaving their homes. "What's your opinion on the results?"

"I was in the process of analyzing them when you called," said Sellers, and against his better judgment added wryly, "as you can see."

The Executor gave a soft indulgent laugh. "Contact me when you've finished. In the meantime, I will require a status report on Project Apocryphos. I'll need you to complete it as soon as possible--sooner than we discussed."

Sellers grimaced. "I'm working as fast as I can. It isn't easy to coordinate production when one's facilities are spread across half the star cluster."

"I didn't ask you to make excuses, Sellers." A flash of fire and brimstone in the sermon now, just enough to make the warning clear. "Decentralizing the main production facilities was necessary in order to preserve the confidential nature of the operation. You should be well aware of that."

"How soon do you need the next status update?"

"As soon as possible. It seems the Patmos facility was infiltrated shortly before its termination; some of our plans may have leaked into the hands of the government. If so, we must be prepared to act."

"Infiltrated?" Sellers leaned forward in his hover-chair. "How?"

"By a Federation agent, most likely. They have special technology from Scientia, classified equipment we haven't been able to duplicate yet. It enables their spacecraft to evade detection by our systems. The intruder didn't show up on our radar until he was inside the base. It's possible he was sent only to retrieve the delegates, but if he happened to do any digging where he wasn't supposed to ...."

"Damn it," said Sellers flatly. "So you believe the Federation may have obtained information about the project."

"Perhaps. It also means they might be able to implicate Nov-OS for collaborating with Ormus. But don't let that concern you," and the voice took on a note of mockery, as if its owner already knew Sellers wouldn't stay concerned for long. "Concentrate on finishing the project. I'll take care of the Federation."

The silhouette vanished from the screen as suddenly as it had appeared, terminating the call before Sellers could answer, yet he understood the Executor's meaning well enough: there were to be no further questions. Sellers frowned, rubbing his forehead. Somehow he always ended up working for people whose grasp on sanity made him question his own.

He glanced at the reports from Patmos. So far, his preliminary analysis of the test data indicated that the remote-linking experiments had achieved results on par with those they had obtained using Mizrahi's emulators seventeen years ago. That meant the emulator he had constructed--asleep for now, in its cage beneath the research complex--was at least as powerful as Mizrahi's, and far superior to the spare unit Sellers had previously tried to build. None of them came anywhere near the true potential of the Zohar, but the new emulator should suffice for their purposes until they had access to the relics on Lost Jerusalem.

Leaving the analysis running in the background, Sellers opened the main file on Project Apocryphos. The experiments in Patmos had been part of it, an integral part--so important it had been necessary to destroy the test subjects along with the rest of the evidence, once they had extracted the data they needed--but the research taking place in the hundreds of other laboratories hidden across the star cluster was equally important. And the Executor's insistence on completing the project as soon as possible had worried him, more than he was willing to let on. If the Federation had already discovered their research, they might not have time to finish it before the government took action against them, and Sellers dreaded the thought. He was so close, now, to achieving his lifelong goal--too close to let a bunch of Federation dogs wrangle it away from him. He didn't know how the Executor intended to handle the Federation, but Sellers had no intention of letting them shut down the project either. Not until he had blotted out Mizrahi's name from the annals of history and written his own in its place.

Sellers didn't care whether he went down as a savior, a destroyer, or both, as long as his reputation lasted through the ages. This time, if he succeeded, he would never again be known as the pale imitation of a great and terrible man; he would become greater, and more terrible.


	11. 11

**11**

It had grown cold again overnight, and Juli's breath clouded when she stepped into the courtyard the next morning. Shivering, she drew her coat around her and went back inside, setting down her teacup and her connection gear on the kitchen table.

A few minutes later she heard MOMO come in. "Morning," said Juli absently, distracted by a headline on her connection gear. The incident in Patmos had monopolized the AMN news feeds for the last two days; already some of the tabloid channels had begun calling it a scandal, and now the term had spread to the mainstream media as well.

So far none of the sources mentioned any names in connection with the incident, but general consensus held the DIRE responsible for mishandling it; the articles all had halfheartedly clever titles like "A DIRE situation in Patmos," or "DIRE in dire straits." The Federation Parliament had criticized the Patmian government for obstructing their rescue attempts, and in return Patmos had turned down requests for further diplomatic talks with the Federation. It was a scenario Juli had witnessed countless times with minor variations in the last year and a half, and she could already guess the outcome.

At least Ziggy's mission had remained a secret. Official reports held that the terrorists had killed off the hostages before the DIRE could respond, then deposited the bodies in the chapel of a long-abandoned Immigrant Fleet base as some sort of cryptic political statement. There was no mention of the refugees Ziggy claimed to have seen there.

Juli suspected her own involvement in the crisis would make headlines sooner or later. The press rarely missed an opportunity to smear another handful of dirt on the Mizrahi legacy; her own name rarely appeared in the news unaccompanied by words like "eccentric" and "shameless," and those were the flattering terms. At least the mainstream publications stuck to criticizing her political actions rather than intruding on her private life. She had avoided reading tabloids since they began speculating about her personal connections with the escort who had accompanied her to some of the DIRE talks in the last two years; there had been the inevitable jokes about what constituted an inappropriate use of government equipment, with answers that hadn't even occurred to her.

At the moment, however, her reputation was the least of her worries. She raised her eyes from the screen to find MOMO waiting beside the table.

"Mommy, do you have a minute to talk?" MOMO stood with her hands behind her back and her head bowed, the way she did when she thought she was distracting Juli from something more important.

"Of course," said Juli, turning off the display of her connection gear. "Why don't you sit down. What's the matter?"

MOMO took a seat in the chair across from her. "Um, the data from the mission, did you look at it too?"

"Yes, Doctus sent me her analysis yesterday," said Juli. "Apparently they were sending and receiving network transmissions outside the AMN, using another system to access the imaginary domain--something like the corporate networks, but on a much larger scale."

MOMO nodded. "That was what Doctus wanted me to look at, the program they were using to transfer information. She thought if I figured it out, maybe we could learn more about the network too."

"It's possible. If we can access this other network without our presence being detected, we might be able to find out who constructed it, and for what purpose. We might even be able to use it to monitor activity on the network from our own terminals. Have you taken a look at the code yet?"

"Yes, I ... I think I may have figured out some of it this morning."

"This morning?" Juli looked at her, startled. "I didn't know you got up that early. How long have you been awake?"

"Since last night." MOMO rubbed her eyes. "I stayed up late trying to decode it, and then I couldn't get to sleep, so ...."

"My goodness. You really are my daughter," she said, surprised at how easily the words came. Admitting that, even half-jokingly, would never have crossed her mind a few years ago.

Before MOMO could answer, a muffled bark sounded from behind the doors to the courtyard. Juli hadn't seen Alby go out this morning, but he must have managed to sneak past her when she opened the doors. MOMO jumped up from her seat. "I'll let him in."

"No need," Ziggy called from the living room. "I've got the situation under control." The doors slid open and closed, and a few moments later he appeared in the kitchen doorway with the dog at his heels.

"Good morning," said MOMO, sitting down again belatedly.

He looked at each of them in turn. "Am I interrupting something?"

"Not at all." Juli waved a hand toward an empty seat at the table, inviting him to join them, but as usual, he remained standing. "We were just discussing the data you brought back from the mission."

"Um, actually," said MOMO, and they both glanced in her direction, "I kind of overheard you talking last night. I didn't mean to, but my window was open, and ...."

"It's all right," said Ziggy. "We were going to discuss it with you anyway. You ought to be informed of what's going on, since it appears we're all working on this investigation together."

"As a family!" She laughed, but just as suddenly grew serious again. "Ziggy, why were you and Mommy talking about your memories? Does the incident in Patmos have something to do with your past?"

"We're not sure yet. It's possible there may be a connection."

"I was asking him if he'd consider using the AMN's encephalon software to reconstruct his memories in a logical order," said Juli. "He has difficulty retrieving them on his own, but if we projected them into a virtual location on the AMN, we might be able to link them up sequentially."

"But isn't that dangerous?" said MOMO. "We still haven't finished testing the environmental simulator, and there've been errors ...."

He nodded. "Juli, I forgot to mention this last night, but MOMO and I encountered an error the last time we tested the battle program. The server running the simulation didn't record anything abnormal, but there was some kind of distortion in the virtual environment. It seemed as though the structure of the network itself had been disrupted."

"Oh!" MOMO almost jumped out of her chair again. "Ziggy, I forgot about that too! Do you suppose ... I mean, do you think it could be possible that ...." She hesitated. "Well, if my calculations are right, this other network in the imaginary domain ... since it isn't registered with the AMN Bureau, it should be completely invisible from the AMN under normal circumstances. That means the flow of data from that network could be intersecting with the AMN all the time without leaving any traces that we can observe. Um ... they might still be able to observe us, though."

"That would certainly explain how they've managed to escape our notice so far," said Juli. The apprehensive feeling she'd been having for the last few days sidled up to her again, and she tried to ignore it.

"But anything passing through the AMN would create a slight disturbance at the point of intersection," MOMO went on. "Just enough to cause a ripple effect in the immediate area without any permanent damage to the structure. A monitoring program wouldn't pick that up."

"Which might explain the strange phenomena we saw in the battle simulator," said Ziggy.

"If so, then we have a serious problem," said Juli. The server running the encephalon program existed in a highly restricted part of the network, deep within the central administrative complex behind a labyrinth of barriers and encryption. "If they've managed to construct a network that not only intersects with the AMN, but can pass through our security measures as if they were nothing ...." She made eye contact with Ziggy, and his expression confirmed the fears she hesitated to acknowledge.

"This could be a lot worse than we thought," he said. Juli wouldn't have put it as mildly herself.

"Then we need to do something right away." Juli stood, pushed in her chair, and cleared her breakfast dishes from the table in what she hoped was a decisive manner. "MOMO, I want you to call Doctus as soon as you get to the AMN Bureau this morning. Tell her everything we just talked about and ask her opinion on how to proceed."

"Got it," said MOMO.

"Please ask her to call me, too; I'd like to speak with her myself." She set her plate and half-finished cup of tea in the sink, and turned toward Ziggy. "Jan, depending on how the situation turns out, we might need your help. Are you up for another mission so soon after ... well, after the last one?"

"I'm always ready to assist in any capacity, as required." Then he must have noticed the concern in her eyes, because his expression softened. "Don't worry about me; I'm all right now." His reassurance sounded unconvincing, and Juli wasn't even sure he had managed to convince himself.

She decided to play along anyway, for his sake. "All right. For now, just stay with MOMO and stand by until we figure out what to do next. In the meantime, I'll try to get clearance from the Subcommittee to proceed with the investigation."

At work later that morning, she held a remote conference from her office with the other Subcommittee members. Since the shadow network existed entirely within the imaginary-number domain, even though it appeared to be the deliberate work of humans, it would probably fall within the expanded jurisdiction of the SOCE. Juli had hesitated to reveal the data to anyone else in the government, but she wanted to proceed with their approval in case she had to account for her actions later on; besides, she trusted the other six members of the SOCE's core group, having chosen and appointed most of them herself.

"We'll leave it to you to proceed with the investigation for now," said one of the other members, reflecting the group consensus after Juli had given her proposal. "Please inform us of your findings."

"Thank you. I'll have a report ready for our next meeting."

She got off the line with the Subcommittee and managed to distract herself with other work until Doctus called.

"Good morning, Dr. Mizrahi. MOMO said you'd be expecting me?"

"That's correct." Juli closed the files she had been working on and shifted the call window to the main screen. "I had a chance to look over the data you sent me yesterday. Have you managed to trace anything else back to this Nov-OS company? I've heard of them before, but ...."

"You won't have heard much about them," said Doctus. "And there's a reason for that. Several reasons, actually. One is because the company was formed less than two years ago, by former executives of Hyams and a few other corporations you might recognize. Another, because they keep their records hidden and conduct a lot of their business _sub rosa_. And the third--or so we speculate--is because they may be providing more than just material assistance to the Ormus groups."

"You mean, you believe they may have something to do with the shadow network?"

"Let me put it this way. Your daughter's involved with the department of the AMN Bureau responsible for approving and overseeing private networks, right?"

Juli recognized the patronizing tone in Doctus' voice and tried to remain civil in spite of it. "Yes, she handles a lot of the cases herself. I've advised her on a few of them."

"Then you're probably also familiar with the government restrictions on network size and the functions they're allowed to perform. You know, communications only within a limited range, no large-scale transfer of objects over a certain mass, no transferring units with live passengers, et cetera. But did you know those regulations were established after a legal battle between the AMN Bureau and a group representing the interests of several large companies, including Nov-OS? It was a little over a year ago, when MOMO was still on the Development Committee at Vector. You may not have heard much about it then, because, if I recall correctly, there was another big scandal making headlines at the time."

Now Juli stared at her incredulously, forgetting to take offense at her attitude. "You don't mean the anti-Ormus hearings?"

"You've got it. The timing couldn't have been better for companies like Nov-OS. Before the Ormus scare, the government had been all set to shut down private corporate networks entirely; for a number of reasons, they didn't think the existence of multiple networks in the imaginary domain, cut off from the AMN, was such a hot idea. Incidentally, that's what we concluded here at Scientia as well."

"Of course," said Juli faintly, steadying herself against the arm of her chair. Every time she had learned something new in the past few days, she felt as though the world had flipped on its side, and everything she thought she knew and had taken for granted appeared in a new perspective, a new angle of the light. By now, the world had turned over so many times she didn't even recognize what she saw anymore. "So you think they took advantage of the Ormus controversy to push for regulations that were more ... favorable to their interests."

"Let's just say I don't subscribe to the idea that it was a coincidence. I suppose if they really wanted to develop a secret network, there'd be nothing to stop them even if corporate networks were outlawed, but it'd be so much more convenient to have an alibi, wouldn't it? At least they could pretend they were operating within legal parameters. Now here's the really interesting part. I did some research on the NSN itself--that's the private network administered by Nov-OS--and trust me, there's not a lot of information out there. Publicly, anyway." A smile flickered briefly across her face, followed by a note of self-satisfaction in her words. "But we do have our sources. Apparently whoever created the NSN architecture knew a hell of a lot about the information substructure of the original UMN, but not much about how to build hyperspace columns. In fact, that's a pretty closely guarded secret even within Vector; not many people outside the AMN Development Committee have the knowledge and expertise to do it. So while Nov-OS may have been able to establish communications with Ormus very early on, in order to provide material support to these groups, they would've had to wait for AMN access to the regions in question."

"So they're still partly dependent on the AMN and the Federation; I assumed as much. But how could they transport equipment to the outer regions without being detected?"

"I'll let you work that one out," said Doctus lightly, "since, at the moment, I still don't have a clue."

In the afternoon, Juli returned to the AMN Bureau and met MOMO and Ziggy in the lab where they had been testing the battle simulator a few days before.

MOMO sat in front of one of the computer terminals along the outer wall of the room, and Ziggy stood to one side watching her work. They both faced away from the door, but when Juli arrived, MOMO swung around in her chair. "Mommy, you're just in time! Come and look at this."

Juli made her way over to the workstation. The main screen displayed a map of the conceptual structure of the AMN, a geodesic sphere that spanned the real and imaginary domains, with a helical axis across its diameter, the core system of the AMN, connecting the two. During the preliminary stage of its development, when the network was still an abstract concept, someone on the AMN Committee had come up with the metaphor of a hollow ball of mesh suspended in water: one hemisphere of the ball appeared above the water's surface, in the domain of real numbers, while the other remained submerged in the realm of the collective unconscious. Although the actual structure of the network looked different when viewed from the physical domain, more like MOMO's earlier diagram showing a web of connections plotted on a map of the stars, the image of the sphere had proven useful in creating theoretical models. A few peripheral screens hovered around the larger one, displaying charts and flows of data.

"MOMO has been using the program she decoded to track the other network," said Ziggy.

MOMO nodded. "I made some adjustments to the code and installed it on one of our AMN terminals here, so now we can access both networks from the same machine. I've been monitoring it all afternoon, and, well ...." A worried look crossed her face, driving out any pride she might have felt for her accomplishment. "Maybe you had better see for yourself. It looks pretty bad."

MOMO entered a command into the keypad, and the screen flickered and refreshed. Juli blocked a gasp behind her hand when she saw the updated image. In an instant one hemisphere had filled with dark swirling tendrils, twining around the struts of the dome and groping toward the central helix. "Is that ...."

An idle communication screen to one side of the main window suddenly flickered to life. "Oh, there you are, Dr. Mizrahi. Glad you could join us. It appears we have a dragon eating the roots of our world tree." Doctus smiled, but as usual, she somehow contrived not to look very happy.

"Yes, I noticed," said Juli. "This is a nightmare. It looks as though the entire imaginary-domain hemisphere has been contaminated. How long has this been going on?"

Doctus' grimace deepened. "Well, from what MOMO and I have been able to determine after I spoke with you this morning, that network appears to have evolved symbiotically with the AMN. I'd say it's probably been with us since we started laying out the infrastructure."

"So it couldn't have been the work of Nov-OS," said Juli, at once relieved and more deeply troubled by the new implications.

"Then who or what is responsible?" said Ziggy. Juli turned, startled by the harshness in his voice; she hadn't known him to get upset this easily, and she wondered again whether he had really had enough time to recover from the trauma of his last mission. To her relief, after a few moments he seemed to relax again. "Could a scattered alliance of Ormus followers really have created all this?"

"It's not likely," said Juli. "Doctus and I were talking about it earlier, and we thought it might have been the work of a corporation in league with the terrorists, but looking at it now ...." She stared at the screen again, and fought a shudder. "That thing doesn't look like anything humans would create deliberately."

"No, it doesn't," said Doctus, "which is why I suspect it may have been there to begin with. But not knowing where it came from didn't stop humans from using the UMN after they'd found it, either. It's possible the entity behind all this might even be the network itself, or some sort of consciousness attached to it."

MOMO stared at the dark blot on the screen. "You mean that thing is _alive_?"

"Well, it might be more accurate to say it appears to have a will of its own, like the Gnosis or U-DO." Doctus brought up the terms with marked indifference, as if she were referring to nothing more sinister than a mildly unusual weather phenomenon. "My guess is that it's either some sort of augmented consciousness that's been performing all the functions of an artificially-constructed network, or else it's a network that managed to evolve a will of its own somehow."

Juli pulled her gaze from the main screen and studied the peripheral displays. "Its signature waveform is very similar to that of a human consciousness. But it's been altered somehow, expanded. How is that possible?" She stared at the graph in case she had read it wrong, and then something else occurred to her. "MOMO, could you get a close-up of the formation around the central axis?"

"Certainly." MOMO entered another sequence of keystrokes, and a section of the diagram expanded to fill the screen. The shadow network swirled around the base of the helical column like a hurricane around its own eye, a few stray wisps uncoiling toward the center. This time MOMO gasped. "Oh, no! It's moving toward the axis! It must be trying to reach the source code!"

"What will happen then?" said Ziggy.

MOMO twisted around in her seat and looked up at him, biting her lip in desperation. "I--I don't know. Something very bad, I think."

He nodded grimly and turned back to the screen. "Assuming it does possess some sort of consciousness, what could its intention be in trying to hack into the operating system? Is it trying to take over the AMN?"

"Right now its influence appears to be limited to the imaginary domain," said Juli, "and there's a reason for that. Do you understand why there have been no reported instances of Gnosis activity in the last few years? It's primarily because of the actions of chaos and the others on Michtam, but that's not the only reason. When we created the AMN infrastructure, we also fundamentally changed the relationship between the two domains. The safeguards we programmed into the operating system were designed to prevent imaginary-number existences, like the Gnosis and Testaments, from directly influencing the physical universe. Unexplained Gnosis-like phenomena still exist, but they're of a different nature from the incidents that occurred before. And the axis itself, even though its main purpose is to link the two domains, also functions as a neutral zone between them. The AI that resides within the axis is like a gatekeeper, regulating access from one realm to the other. But if a highly-developed consciousness from the imaginary domain were to seize control of that link, it could potentially begin to manifest itself in this domain, as a phenomenon similar to the Gnosis."

"And in that case," said Doctus, "all hell would break loose. To put it mildly."

MOMO jumped to her feet. "Then, we've got to do something! Otherwise, everything we spent the last two years rebuilding is going to be destroyed all over again. We can't let that happen. How much time do we have?"

Doctus shrugged. "You have the data in front of you; do the math. But if you want my opinion, that particular formation appears to have developed in the last twelve hours. I'd say we have another day or two before it cracks the source code."

MOMO swallowed hard, her eyes fixed on the screen. "I think I know what to do. But I'll have to start as soon as possible. And I'm going to need everyone's help."


	12. 12

**12**

They spent the rest of that day and the following day setting MOMO's plan into action. With help from Juli and Doctus, MOMO used the data from the Patmos base to develop a patch for the AMN operating system, a defensive program that would detect and block interference from the other network. The AMN Bureau used similar programs to keep track of registered corporate networks and to safeguard the AMN's core structure against hacking attempts, although this was the first time MOMO had had to consider both tasks at once.

"All right," said MOMO, stepping back from the terminal where she had been testing the program. "That should be everything." She walked over to the two open dive beds in the center of the room. "Doctus, have you uploaded the parameters for your AMWS?"

Doctus gave a brisk nod from the screen. "The _Astraea_'s all ready to go." She would be joining the dive from her own location, meeting up with MOMO and Ziggy at the coordinates they had specified.

"Good. What about you, Ziggy?"

"I'm ready to go when you are." He and Juli had been reluctant to send MOMO into danger, but, as MOMO had pointed out, as a system administrator for the AMN, she was one of the few people in the Federation who had clearance to modify the AMN source code. Even Doctus had only limited access, her permissions restricted to the lower levels of the operating system. MOMO could have administered the patch by herself, but Doctus and Ziggy had volunteered to accompany her for protection.

"All right, I've set the dive coordinates and all systems are running normally," said Juli, monitoring several screens at once from another terminal. One of the peripheral screens displayed a constantly evolving map of the two networks, set to update every few seconds in real time. In the last twenty-four hours, the shadow network had spiraled in on the core of the AMN like a slowly contracting iris. Juli checked over the settings one last time and joined MOMO and Ziggy in front of the dive units. "MOMO ...." she began, but MOMO stopped her before she could continue.

"Please don't worry about us, Mommy. We'll all be looking out for each other, just like you always say."

She managed a faint smile, but the tension at its edges betrayed her concern. "Actually, I was just going to wish you luck. I know you'll do fine. Of course ... I'll be looking out for you too." She gripped MOMO's shoulder for a long moment, then let go and looked past her. "And you, Jan."

MOMO sat down in the smaller of the two dive units, and Ziggy took the larger one. While Juli ran through the start-up sequence, MOMO leaned out of her seat and looked over at him.

"I'm a little scared," she whispered, too quietly for Juli to overhear from where she stood. "Are you?"

He thought for a moment, remembering something she had said a long time ago, and he nodded. "It's okay. Try not to worry. Even if something goes wrong, I'll be here with you."

Her eyes brightened behind the visor of her headgear. She smiled and lay back against the base of the dive unit as the login sequence executed.

He blinked, and the world reassembled itself before his eyes. They stood at the base of the outer shell of the axis, a blank gray wall surrounded by a profusion of towers and neon-lit avenues sprawling away in every direction under an indistinct dark sky. The security programs guarding the axis prevented them from logging directly into or out of the area enclosed by the wall, so they had set their coordinates for a point just outside the perimeter.

MOMO gripped his arm and pointed. "Look over there!"

He did, and saw a vague, blurry shadow moving among the towers in a manner that reminded him of the Gnosis when they weren't fully materialized.

"Those things are all over the place," said MOMO, still in a whisper, as if she thought the shadows might hear her. "That must be what the shadow network looks like. I think I can use the Hilbert Effect on them if they get too close."

He nodded. "Let's hope we don't have to find out. It looks as though they haven't reached the axis yet."

The _Astraea_ loaded into existence behind them. "Looks even worse from the ground, doesn't it?" said Doctus. "We'd better get a move on before they get here. Just remember, once we're inside the firewall, we won't be able to log out again until we get outside, so be prepared to run like hell if something goes wrong."

"Right." MOMO detached herself from Ziggy's arm and went over to the wall. She placed her hand on the smooth surface, and an intricate pattern of glowing pathways radiated from where she had touched it. A moment later, a section of the wall dissolved, leaving an opening large enough for Doctus' AMWS to pass through easily. MOMO stepped inside and waved for them to follow.

They stood at one end of a walkway leading across a chasm to a massive pillar-like structure which the outer wall surrounded like a sheath. From a distance the column looked solid, but Ziggy had seen it up close during its construction, and he remembered MOMO explaining that it was actually made of thousands of spiraling strands which were made of thousands of smaller strands in turn, and so on down to the minuscule fibers of information that formed the axis of the AMN, bundled together into an immense multi-leveled helix like the genetic blueprint for some impossibly complex life form. The chamber itself appeared about a mile in diameter, extending into darkness above and below the path.

They had gone about halfway across when the first tremors jolted through the walkway like the aftershocks of a distant explosion.

"Watch out!" cried MOMO, bracing herself as her ether bow materialized in her hands. "Something's coming!"

Ziggy assumed a defensive stance in front of MOMO, although he recognized the uselessness of trying to protect her now--it was impossible to tell which direction the attack would come from, and he couldn't guard every direction at once. "MOMO, are your sensors picking up anything?"

"I--I can't tell!" The floor shuddered, and she staggered against him to catch her balance. "The readings are extremely confusing. I'm detecting something, but I can't make any sense of it!"

"Keep going!" said Doctus, bringing the _Astraea_ up behind them. "You have to make it to the center before they do. I'll stay here and hold them off. Just hurry--I don't know how much time I can buy us."

"Doctus, no! What are you--" Ziggy stopped himself, surprised by his own outburst. "You can't take them on alone. What's going to happen if you're overpowered?"

"Never mind! If I have to, I'll force an emergency logout and bypass the firewall. I'm using my artificial body as a proxy, so it won't affect me the way it would if I were directly linked to the network, the way you and MOMO are. If I disconnect without a proper logout sequence, it might cause some damage to my circuits, but it's nothing that can't be repaired."

The walkway heaved again. He overbalanced and almost fell over the edge, but MOMO grabbed his arm and hauled him back. Sometimes he forgot how strong she was.

"We don't have time for this," said Doctus. "Listen, if I don't make it back today, I want you to remember something for me. You think you can do that?"

"What is it?"

"Project Apocryphos. Just remember that for now, in case .... I'll explain more later, if I can." She pulled the _Astraea_ up higher as another shock hit the walkway. "But you'd better hurry up, or you won't make it out of here either."

"Doctus, thank you so much!" MOMO called as they set off running. "We owe you!"

"Don't bother keeping track of it," she called back. "As far as the Captain here is concerned, I'm just doing a favor for an old friend."

Ziggy didn't understand what she was talking about, and it wasn't until they had made it across that he realized she had referred to him by his former title. The recognition hit him like a gunshot, and he whipped around, but the _Astraea_ was out of range, a luminous figure floating above the abyss. For a moment he wished he still had the interlink device installed. He didn't know what he would have said to her, but he wanted her to know that he knew.

He turned back to MOMO. She stood in front of the pillar on a platform that joined the walkway. "Is there something I can do?" he said.

She looked over her shoulder. "Just stay with me while I install the patch. It shouldn't take long, but--" Another tremor struck, and he reached out to steady her, but she had already recovered her balance. She managed a nervous smile. "I feel safe when you're with me."

"I won't leave you," he said, moving closer. After a moment he noticed a shift in the light moving through the spiral strands of the column.

"That should do it." MOMO turned around. "At least, it should stop anything from hacking into the operating system for now."

"Good work, MOMO. Now we have to find a way out of here." They both looked back across the walkway. The _Astraea_ still hovered in the distance, but now the darkness surged and wavered around it, racked by explosions and sudden flashes of light.

"They're already here," said MOMO, with no attempt to conceal her dismay. "The other network wasn't supposed to reach the axis yet. How could it have spread so fast?"

"I don't know. Doctus said the network might have some sort of consciousness. Maybe it's aware of us."

Light flared in the distance. MOMO gasped and clung to his arm again, and he moved to shield her as another shock wave reached them. When he looked back again, he saw no sign of the _Astraea_ in the living darkness.

Which was suddenly advancing much faster than before, boiling toward them in a shimmering, shivering mass like a heat wave, and MOMO tugged his arm--she hadn't let go yet--and half-led, half-dragged him to the edge of the platform. "Come on!" Before he could object or resist or even understand what she was doing, she stepped off the edge and pulled him after her.

A second platform opened beneath them like a round raft bobbing up from the depths. A few more steps, and each time they ventured out onto darkness another raft appeared, extending the main platform in the opposite direction of the walkway. "What is this?"

"An escape route," said MOMO, and for a second he thought she was being facetious until she explained. "It's sort of an emergency exit system. It only works if you have special permission, and only administrators like me are supposed to know about it. So don't tell anyone, okay?"

"I won't." He ran alongside her and the platforms rose to meet his strides, like ripples in water. Behind them the first links in the chain had begun to fade, growing transparent and sinking back into the darkness.

The field of distortion created by the shadow network surged toward the axis, then suddenly pulled apart and flowed to either side of it, as if repelled by the change in the light. "It worked!" said MOMO, but they had no time to celebrate, because the darkness ahead of them was suddenly alive as well, and then it was all around them, a churning, writhing, seething, whispering wall of shadows.

MOMO drew her bow and stepped back into a combative stance. Ziggy retrieved his own weapon and did the same, and they stood with their backs to each other, facing the darkness. "Looks like we're surrounded again," he said.

"Don't worry." She activated the Hilbert Effect, and the insubstantial mass began to lighten and solidify at its edges, revealing a knot of thick rope-like structures that had an organic appearance. From the corner of his eye the structures seemed to take on any number of forms--bodies, outstretched hands, faces he almost recognized--until he looked in that direction and the illusions disappeared.

He launched a round from his cannon. Where it struck, a section of the wall turned ashen and crumbled away, but before he could fire again the visible part of the wall caved under and more darkness billowed in around it. "It's no use," he said. "What do we do now?"

MOMO backed against him, slipping her left hand into his right. "I don't know. I think it really is the end this time."

He nodded. This time, neither one of them had to say any more. He held onto her hand as the darkness flooded around them.

* * *

The shrill pitch of warning signals filled the room. Juli leapt up from the monitoring station and ran to the dive units, her heart pounding so hard the noise in her ears almost drowned out the alarms.

The faces of the two unconscious figures hadn't changed, and all their life signs read normal. It was just their coordinates she had lost, an instant after the gathering threads of the invading network pulled to either side around the axis. She had tracked their progress since the dive began, plotting their coordinates on the same map of the network where she had been tracking the invasion. The two points corresponding to MOMO and Ziggy had disappeared a few minutes after Doctus' signal cut out, but without leaving behind a scribble of fragmented data the way Doctus had when she disconnected. They had merely vanished along with their dive records, as if the dark shape had erased them from existence.

She hurried back to the terminal and pulled up the window she had been using to communicate with the dive-support team from Scientia. "What's--" she began, but the Scientia technician finished speaking before her.

"What's going on?"

"I just lost track of their coordinates," said Juli, fighting to keep the panic out of her voice. "Can you tell where they went?"

"Negative," said the technician. "Although if they're somewhere on the shadow network, our instruments wouldn't be able to pick them up anyway."

"They're on the shadow network?"

The technician went on as if he hadn't heard Juli. "Its behavior has become increasingly erratic. There's so much interference we can hardly track its movement anymore. It's as if the structure of imaginary space itself is distorted inside it, and everything around it is getting pulled in."

She gripped the back of the chair in front of the workstation. "So what does that mean?"

The technician shook his head and shrugged.

Juli gripped the chair harder and was about to advise him to take a wild guess when she noticed an incoming call on another screen. The alarms were so loud she hadn't heard the call. She slammed a few keystrokes, cutting the alarms off mid-shriek, and picked up the transmission. "Representative Helmer? Is this important?"

"I suppose that depends on the relative importance of whatever I'm interrupting," said Helmer. "However, we've just received word of a string of attacks on Federation military installments in the outer regions, the same places where we've observed the highest incidence of post-Ormus activity. You asked me to keep you informed, so I thought you should be the first to know."

"I see." Juli pressed her lips together, afraid to say more; in her mind a voice screamed, _Not today, damn it, not now. One goddamn crisis at a time!_ But it was the same crisis, after all. That seething inkblot on the screen connected everything, like a network of invisible roots spanning miles underground. Whatever had attacked those ships had also erased Ziggy and MOMO and had caused the deaths of civilians and Federation diplomats in Patmos, and there was no telling what else it had already done, or what it might do next.

"Additionally," said Helmer, "all of the targets broadcast a message to Federation military headquarters within minutes of their destruction. By themselves, the messages were fragmentary, but when read in order ...."

Juli shook her head. She knew what he was going to say, and she knew she wouldn't like it.

"Why don't I just send you a copy of the message and you can read it for yourself," he said apologetically.

"Go ahead." She glanced over at the other communication screen, distracted for a moment by the Scientia technician's attempts to get her attention.

"It's on its way now. Dr. Mizrahi, I hate to pry, but I noticed I seem to be interrupting something. Is everything okay?"

Juli stared at the screen without comprehension, as if Helmer had just started speaking in an unfamiliar language. "Yes, it's ... I'll explain later. For now, I'd appreciate if you would continue to keep me updated on the situation, and let me know if anything changes."

"I plan on it," said Helmer.

After he had closed the transmission, she brought up the message he had sent, ignoring the Scientia technician for a few moments longer while she read it.

"Dr. Mizrahi, are you there?"

She spun around to face the first screen. "What is it?" she said, more harshly than she had intended.

The technician flinched and backed away as if he thought she could strike at him through the screen. "It's--uh--the network is--"

Juli glanced at the display. Around the central helix of the AMN, the fibers of the shadow network had begun to unravel, peeling away in tatters. "I see. MOMO's upgrade appears to be working." She swallowed hard, feeling suddenly calm, as if she had arrived at a place beyond fear. "What's going to happen if they're trapped inside the network when it breaks down?"

"I--I don't know," said the technician, in a voice that suggested he had a fairly good idea of what might happen, but he didn't want to tell her. "I suppose, I mean, if they were incorporated into the network, it's conceivable they might, um, also break down with it."

"Then we need to get them out before that happens."

"What?" The technician blinked and lowered his arms, and an embarrassed look crossed his face, as if he'd suddenly realized he was cowering from a hologram.

"I said we need to get them out. I don't care how we do it, but it has to be done. I'm going to try to open a line of communication into the shadow network. If I can contact them, I might be able to initiate a logout sequence."

"But--"

"If you have any other ideas," she said mildly, "don't keep them to yourself."

That kept him quiet, and with another glance back at the dive beds--_hang on, just hang on,_ she thought, and she didn't know whether she meant it for them or for herself--she sat down at the control station and went to work.


	13. 13

**13**

He was still holding her hand when the darkness subsided and the dim outlines of walls became visible in the half-light.

"Where are we?" said MOMO, her voice echoing from the ancient stonework. "This place looks familiar."

He didn't answer, and he didn't notice when he let go of her hand and let his fingers uncurl at his side, the right hand as numb and cold as the left. As he had done a thousand times in his nightmares, he turned already knowing what he would see: the massive block of the altar rising from the floor like a tomb, the cold gray light that somehow managed to pass through the stained-glass window unaltered, turning everything cold and gray.

Against the monumental scale of the cathedral, the human-sized figure that detached itself from the shadows at the base of the altar seemed hardly remarkable, approaching the two of them in a few leisurely strides.

MOMO's gasp resounded like a shot. "That's--"

"MOMO, get back!" Startled out of inertia, he pushed her aside and stepped in front of her. "You .... What are you doing here?"

He smiled. In the shadows the red of his eyes seemed black, his face a gray stone mask like the walls and the light and the dead world outside, if there was a world outside anymore. "Strange you should ask. I would have thought you'd be wondering how you got here yourself."

Ziggy advanced another step under the echoing vault. He wasn't entirely convinced, yet, that any of this was real--especially the man standing in front of him. Too many of his nightmares had begun this way, and all but twice they had ended when he awoke. "You had better explain yourself, Erich."

"I suppose you think this is a dream," he said, as if reading Ziggy's thoughts. "And you may not be entirely wrong. A phenomenon that arises in the unconscious domain, whether it's your own mind or the collective unconscious of the universe--if that's what you call a dream, then yes, that's what this is. This world is a projection, a virtual environment assembled from memory. But in another sense, I can assure you that what you're experiencing now is real."

"That's not possible." He told himself he was just playing along, that any moment now he'd wake up, heart racing, in the droning silence of the lab; he just had to hold out until then. "None of this is possible. You're not supposed to exist anymore. Lactis sacrificed himself to make sure you would never return."

"So he did," said Voyager, "and he suffered a fate you were powerless to prevent, as I recall. I see you've made a habit of depending on your subordinates to save you. It's a wonder you managed to earn their admiration in the first place. But I suppose there's something miserable about you that inspires their sympathy."

"That's not true," said MOMO with quiet indignation. "How dare you say those things about Ziggy!"

Voyager raised his head and eyed her with mild interest, as if noticing her for the first time since they had arrived. "For the sake of your remaining dignity, Jan Sauer, I'll pretend I didn't notice the irony of having this ... young lady ... rush to your defense. Now then, you wanted to know how I came to be here? You're right, Lactis destroyed himself when he betrayed me, and I'm pleased to say he got the traitor's death he deserved. I might have suffered the same fate if I hadn't let go at the last instant. My consciousness was already in fragments; all that remained of me was the fear of my own demise. And that fear was what saved me, at the very moment I faced total dissolution into the void."

Ziggy felt his jaw tighten and his fists contract involuntarily. "You're saying Lactis gave his life for nothing?"

"I said no such thing. He died believing he had a reason to exist. He died believing he had saved you, his own captain. You should at least be thankful that he found peace in the end--which is more than you can say for yourself, isn't it?"

He ignored the question. "Are you the one controlling the shadow network?"

Voyager laughed, a deep unsettling sound that filled the empty space of the cathedral. "I'm afraid you misunderstand--_I_ am the network. Or perhaps I should say the network is an outgrowth of my will. It was born when the scattered fragments of my mind began absorbing information from the collective unconscious. I found that I could extend my will by using the same ability that had allowed me to construct a working memory inside the UMN; after that, it was merely a matter of forming the right connections. But I couldn't have extended my reach as far as I did if the framework hadn't already been there." His gaze slid toward MOMO again, and Ziggy shifted his stance in front of her, a defensive reflex. "For that, young lady, I owe you my gratitude. You've done me a great favor--and I'll bet you didn't even realize what you were doing."

Ziggy interrupted MOMO before she could ask the same question he did, as he sensed she was about to do. "Are you saying the AMN had something to do with preserving your consciousness?"

"Does it really surprise you?" His tone was half accusing, half triumphant. "Didn't you realize what you were meddling with when you tried to unite the two domains of this universe? Don't feign innocence. You chose to ignore the dangers and go about your work blindly, without any regard for the consequences. Is it any wonder you weren't prepared to face the results? You had no idea what would happen when you cast your net across the sea of information, did you? Perhaps even _she_ didn't know. What a pity she isn't here now, to see the results of all her scheming and plotting for the last hundred years."

Ziggy pushed back anger, suppressed the urge to strike at the half-lit figure beneath the altar. He had learned from their last few encounters that any such attempt would have the same effect as boxing with his own shadow--worse, because his own shadow didn't bend space and time to turn his blows back against him. "You shouldn't have survived at all, Erich. Lactis said it himself. You should have disappeared along with the one who was controlling you--even if your desire for power hadn't destroyed you first."

"It's true, my power as a Testament was limited," said Voyager. "Touching the Compass of Order almost destroyed me, but in the end I was transformed by its power. Not enough to become a god as I had planned, but enough to release me from the limits of human consciousness. You could say I've become something like a demiurge, a creator god of the lower realm."

Ziggy had a momentary flash of recollection, of hands straining toward light in the instant before they dissolved. "Is that why you're manipulating the followers of Ormus? Because you've managed to convince them you're some kind of god?"

Voyager looked insulted. "They follow me because, to them, I'm no different from a god. Their own leaders deceived them, but they put their faith in me because I can grant them the salvation they were tricked into believing they could obtain."

"You mean the so-called 'promised land'? You don't really intend to lead them back to Lost Jerusalem."

"Of course not. Why should I waste the effort? They've already shown that they're content to believe in lies. There's no need to give them the real thing, at least not yet. The paradise I can provide for them is more than enough to satisfy their dreams of returning to the homeland. My interest in returning to Lost Jerusalem has to do with the relics there, but I'll retrieve them in due time. For now, I concern myself with the people of Ormus for the same reason as always. I require their power to achieve my goals."

"Then you're just like the others who were lying to them before!" MOMO burst out. "How can you use other people as if they were just objects?"

He laughed again, quietly this time, a soft menacing rasp like the whisper of a blade being drawn. "And I suppose you'd know all about being used, Realian."

"MOMO, I told you to stay back!" said Ziggy, with such force that she actually staggered a few steps, as if he'd struck her. His gaze turned forward again, and his voice took on a different edge. "Voyager, what you're doing is despicable. I can't say it surprises me; I would have expected as much from you. But why use Ormus to attack the Federation? What is it you want from us?"

"I think you know the answer to that question. I have my own reasons for waging war against the Federation, but that doesn't concern you. I knew you would get involved if I targeted something important to you, and that was also my intention. You may not be instrumental to my plans, but I haven't given up hope that you'll join me in achieving them."

"I've never had any intention of joining you."

"So you say. I happen to believe you can be persuaded to change your mind." He came a few strides nearer, so they stood only a few feet apart now, and Ziggy fought against the impulse to turn away as the red eyes locked with his own. "What's the matter? Afraid I'll find out something you don't want me to know? It's too late to hide anything from me. I've already looked into your heart; I've seen the fear that drives you, just as I was driven by the fear of death. You've always been afraid you won't be strong enough to defend what is precious to you--isn't that right?"

Ziggy flinched, shuddered; for a moment the red of his nightmares flashed across his sight, a glimpse of contorted figures in the instant before he looked away, before he could identify the dead--and when he looked again they were gone, replaced by shadow and stone.

"You couldn't even save them when they were standing right in front of you." His tone would have bordered on pity if it hadn't been for the condescending smugness layered over it. "And now you have to watch them die over and over again in your memories, an eternal punishment for your failure. But they aren't the only ones you've failed." Other images, now, superimposed on the empty space, persisting even when he tried to close his eyes or block out the sensory input to his mind. "You're afraid of your own inadequacy, and for good reason. All of your experience has confirmed that fear; now you're afraid you won't be able to protect the world you've been working so hard to rebuild. But don't forget, you possess the same factor that I have. Even in your wretched state, the light of your will is like a beacon that gives hope to those around you. If you lend me your power, then perhaps we can stop the inevitable destruction of this world. You see, we really aren't all that different. I want the universe to survive as much as you do."

For a moment Ziggy wanted to believe it--anything to silence the noise in his head--but then he seized control of himself, stemmed the flood of recollection to a place at the back of his mind, beneath his awareness. "That's a lie, Erich. And if you believe it, you're lying to yourself. You just want to escape from the world and take everyone else with you. But you can't protect the world by retreating into an illusion."

Voyager made a sound of disapproval and stepped back, staring up into the vault as if he could see the sky through it. "I see. And what about your friends who are on their way to Lost Jerusalem? Surely you want their mission to succeed."

The abrupt change of subject caught him off guard. "You know about that?"

"Careful." He lowered his gaze with a smug expression, as if he had managed to work out something he had only suspected before. "If I hadn't, you would have just given it away. But tell me, what would be the point in attaining Lost Jerusalem if our own civilization was reduced to dust in the meantime? What a terrible irony that would be."

Rage lashed up in him again and he steeled himself against it, reminded himself it was useless. "That's enough, Erich! You won't convince me to believe anything you say, so just give up."

"That's a shame," said Voyager. "Because we're almost out of time." He looked again to the ceiling high above them, where a few fragments of stone had fallen away from a hole that opened into a swirling fog. There was something unreal about it, as if it were an opening not in the ceiling but in the fabric of the world itself. "Realian, I'm afraid your little software upgrade has had the desired effect on the system. This part of my mind is becoming unstable, and it's only a matter of time before it collapses altogether."

MOMO looked around in alarm. "Then we have to get out of here! Ziggy, what are we going to do?"

"I don't know what you're going to do, young lady," said Voyager, "but Jan Sauer has to make a decision." He turned to Ziggy. "Either accept what I've proposed to you, or perish when this part of the network is destroyed. It's up to you."

"I see." Ziggy lowered his eyes, staring into the middle distance. "Then I guess I'll be going down with the network."

"Ziggy, wait!" MOMO dashed to his side again, and this time he made no attempt to stop her. "There has to be a way out. And if not--if not, then I'll stay here with you, right until the very end." She cast a defiant glare at Voyager. "No matter what you do, you can't hurt us."

A mirthless smile tightened across his face. "Such naïveté. Well, I hate to force your hand, but I'm not prepared to let you perish yet either. I'd much prefer if you came along willingly, but ...." He lifted one hand and made a brief, dismissive gesture. MOMO gave a strangled cry and folded over as if reeling from a blow. She swayed and collapsed to her knees.

Turning, Ziggy lunged for her, but the floor buckled and cracked under his first stride, the stones coming loose around the widening gaps in the world. He reached her just as the floor caved under her, and he found himself kneeling at the edge of an abyss, clinging to her hand to keep her from sliding into it.

"Ziggy," she whispered, gratitude fighting through the pain and terror etched on her face.

He held out his left arm. "Don't be afraid," he said, as calmly as he could manage when his own heart beat so fast he thought something inside him would rupture. "Just try to grab hold."

She grasped at the outstretched fingers of his left hand but came up short. "I--I don't think I can do it. I can't hold on anymore."

He pulled back as another course of stonework toppled into the void. She still held on to his right hand, but he could feel her grasp weakening. "Please try again. Just one more time."

Biting her lip, she flailed out again with her free arm, and this time her fingers closed around his wrist. Relief washed through him, but only for a moment; he felt the floor stones around him pulling apart, and knew that even if he lifted her onto solid ground, in a few minutes there would be no solid ground left to stand on.

He took a deep breath. "MOMO, I'm sorry ... I ...."

Her eyes widened, fixed on something above him, and before either of them could react he felt an invisible force seize him and haul him back from the edge. Her fingers slipped from his grasp, and from the corner of his eye he saw her slide backward, saw the gray fog roll in and close around her in a wave.

Later, he wouldn't remember if he had cried out or if he had been too numb with grief and horror to make any sound. The force that had torn him away from MOMO still held him, and before he could fully comprehend what had happened, it hauled him into the air above the sinking, caving floor of the cathedral. The ceiling had begun collapsing too, and massive stone blocks and rafters plummeted around him. Directly above was an opening like a jagged oculus, a blind spot that shielded him from the falling debris.

Voyager stood on the air in front of him, silhouetted and backlit against the stained-glass window. The falling stones dodged around him as if consciously avoiding his path. "I warned you," he said, his voice flat with disapproval. "I gave you the chance to decide. I've waited for more than a hundred years for you to come to your senses. But even the gods lose their patience." He forced a thin smile. "And I'm not a god. Not yet."

Ziggy stared at him, breathing shallowly, his eyes unfocused and unseeing. He felt as though he had left some part of himself in the cathedral below, as if something intangible had been ripped away when MOMO fell, and it had gone into the void with her.

The clouds stirred above him and a faint light, different from the cold gray light inside the cathedral, strained through at the seams. Above the groan of expiring stonework another sound broke through, a voice he distantly recalled as if from another universe, another lifetime--and it seemed he had lived a thousand lifetimes now, instead of just two.

"... Jan? ... MOMO? ... Are you there? Answer me if you can hear me ...."

Voyager's smile deepened into something terrible. "Well. Your guardian angel has arrived."

Ziggy raised his head with effort and peered into the brightening gap in the ceiling. The clouds had thinned, and the light on his face felt like turning with closed eyes toward the sun. He tried to answer, but his mouth had gone as dry as dust.

"How does it make you feel," said Voyager, "to be rescued by the very people you're supposed to protect? Doesn't it make you ashamed of yourself?" He laughed. "I could end your suffering now, but I'd prefer to see you beg for that mercy. I'll make you crawl to me like a supplicant before the gods, praying to be forgiven. And if you continue to resist, I'll shatter you. I'll tear your soul to pieces so you'll know exactly what it was like when it happened to me."

"... MOMO ... Jan ... if you can hear me, answer me, please!"

"Juli, I can hear you." He hardly recognized his own voice.

"Jan? Are you all right? What happened? Is MOMO with you?"

Voyager's eyes narrowed. "I guess we'll have to settle this another time. I'll leave it to you to decide when that will be--just remember, the longer you wait, the more you'll have to suffer. And I think you've suffered enough already." He gave a slight inclination of his head and dissolved into the air, his last words hanging in the echoes of the vault after he had gone. "I'll be waiting for you."

"Are you still there?" Juli's voice sounded frantic. "What's going on?"

"I'm still here. There's been .... MOMO is ...." He didn't know how to continue.

"She isn't with you?"

He considered explaining, but he didn't think he could find the words. "No."

"Damn it. All right, I'm going to initiate a logout sequence. Just hold on."

He waited, but there didn't seem to be much left in this place to hold on to. With Voyager gone, or at least since that particular manifestation of his consciousness had abandoned this part of his mind, this place had lost whatever stability his presence had imposed on it. What remained of the walls and floor and ceiling came unbound, the stone itself unraveling into the fog, and at last Ziggy stood alone in a depthless, directionless expanse like the inside of a cloud.

He stared down at his hands, at his arms, but they too had become insubstantial, the outlines blurring and running into the gray. He felt permeable, as if the boundaries of his self had thinned enough to allow the fog to pass through; in another few moments he might not remember who he was, but the thought of losing what remained of himself seemed agreeable to him. It would come as a relief when he could finally let go, release his last breath and exhale himself into the void.

He didn't notice when one world shifted into another. The grayness persisted, and he had only a distant sense of opening his eyes in another room somewhere, of someone else's hands prying off the dive headset and helping him sit upright. Voices, lights, warmth, reached him as if from a great distance, if at all. He had fallen into a world of ashes.


	14. 14

**14**

The nothingness around her gave way to darkness, the darkness to twilight and the first dull stirrings of sensation, then to soft ground beneath her and warm golden light breaking above and her own awareness swimming hazily in the midst of it, her own small form lying curled in a bed of pink and yellow flowers that seemed familiar somehow, though she couldn't remember where she had seen them before.

MOMO sat up slowly, flowers brushing against her arms. Her head felt fuzzy, her vision glazed at the edges. When she pulled herself to her knees and tried to stand, the ground suddenly dropped out from under her as it did sometimes when she dreamed of falling and awoke with a jolt, only this time she saw pale watery blue and a blur of lights and faces beyond it, and she couldn't tell which side of dreaming she was on.

"--_artificial personality layer activated_--"

"--_not responding_--"

"--_damn it, she's malfunctioning again, shut it down_--"

She felt her body shudder and draw breath as if she was tethered to it from a great distance, and just as suddenly the images and voices retreated like the view at the far end of a telescope, and she crumpled to her hands and knees in the field, the soft ground pillowing her fall.

Instead of trying to stand again, she looked past the bed of flowers to the trees at the edge of the clearing, pastel foliage blending into watercolor clouds hanging low in the sky under the last fading stars. Patches of mist drifted nearer over the ground, spun to gold as they burned away in the light of morning. She recognized this place, felt certain she had been here recently, but her memories kept slipping away from her, insubstantial as the mist.

Then she saw the ship, a blue-white blade half-submerged in tall grass in the middle of the clearing, and her heart leapt and sent her staggering to her feet again, and she laughed this time when she stumbled and fell without pain and got back up and kept running.

"Jr.!" she cried, an instant before he caught her up in his arms and hugged her and swung her around so fast it felt like flying, and when he set her down her head was still spinning and his face was a blur. "I missed you so much!"

"I missed you too," he said, feigning nonchalance, but his voice was hoarse with emotion. "Man, you haven't changed one bit."

"I--I haven't?" She dropped her gaze self-consciously, realized her body was a child's, and then wondered why she thought it should be any different. "Oh."

Jr. laughed and broke into a broad grin. "Hey, don't worry about it. I'm still the same, aren't I?" Now that the world had stopped spinning and she could see his face clearly, she realized he hadn't changed either. But there was something strange about him too, something she couldn't place at first; maybe he just seemed unfamiliar because she hadn't seen him in two years. He jerked a thumb back toward the open airlock. "C'mon, the others are all inside. I can't wait to see the looks on their faces when they see you."

MOMO started to follow him, but hesitated. "Jr., wait. Are we ...." She looked back across the clearing. "Where is this place?"

He stared at her. For a moment his face went blank, and she realized what she had found so unsettling about him before, but then she stumbled again and the earth lurched away from her feet, and she glimpsed the room submerged in cold blue light, heard snatches of distorted conversation, before she came back to the ground, blinking, grasping at the important thing she had been trying to remember a moment before, but she had already forgot what it was.

Jr. kept staring at her, his hands perched on his hips and his head tossed back, the smile on his lips half-mocking, half-affectionate, the way she had remembered him these last two years. She wanted to run up and throw her arms around him again, but something held her in place. "The others are here too?" she said, trying to stare past him into the darkened passage.

"Yeah, and we even met up with chaos and KOS-MOS, can you believe that? And now that you're here, we can all be together again, just like the old days. Pretty cool, huh?"

MOMO nodded tentatively. "Y-yes, it's ... oh, Jr., it's wonderful! But ...." She didn't understand what was holding her back; she had waited all this time to see them again, but now her feet refused to lift from the soft ground. Something she was forgetting, something she had missed--something she noticed only by the shape of its absence-- "What about Ziggy? Is he with you too?"

"Huh?" Jr.'s smile didn't fade, but it was starting to look a little strained around the edges. "Is who with us?"

MOMO frowned, but then she realized he must be joking with her. "You know, _Ziggy_. Ziggurat 8? The old man?"

"Old man, huh?" Jr. scratched his head. "Well, Captain Matthews is getting pretty crusty, I guess, but you better not say that to his face or he'll kick you off the ship."

"No, I mean ...." But she forgot what she had been asking him, and she laughed, as much at Jr.'s remark as at her own absentmindedness. Then a knot of emotion surfaced in her throat, cutting off her laughter, and she realized just how much she had missed the captain and his boorish remarks, and Tony and Hammer's antics on the bridge, and Shion and Allen and the others, and the _Elsa_ itself, and her own bunk in the women's cabin with her books and pictures on the shelves above her bed, and how happy she had been, and she wiped away tears with the back of her hand. "Sorry, I ... I guess I was thinking about something else."

Jr.'s grin deepened and he shook his head. "So come inside already! Shion's making curry for everyone, and I'll bet she could use some help, since the boys sure aren't doing a damn thing, Mary and Shelley don't cook, and KOS-MOS only does the dishes. And then you can tell us all about your adventures since the last time we saw you, and wait'll you hear about the crazy stuff _we've_ been through, you won't believe half of it, and the other half you _really_ won't believe--"

She realized she could move again, and followed him into the airlock.

Inside, she stood blinking in the sharp daylight. She had walked into a room much larger than the passage into the _Elsa_, a spare gray room with no furnishings or decorations other than the piano in the middle of it. Confused, she looked around for Jr., then forgot he had been there at all when she saw her mother seated at the bench, younger than MOMO remembered her and wearing a slim dark blue dress.

Juli looked up at her as she entered the room, and smiled. MOMO realized she had never seen her mother truly happy before, without the lines of pain and worry permanently etched around her mouth and eyes. "You're just in time for your lesson, MOMO." Juli rested a hand on the bench beside her. "Why don't you have a seat and play what we've been practicing together."

Feeling dazed, MOMO walked around to the other side of the bench--

--_and her mother stood peering in at her from behind the blue screen in the cold room, her mother as MOMO remembered her, no longer young, her face still delicate but wide-eyed and stamped with fear, her voice from a long way off sounding filtered through water, saying "MOMO, if you can hear me, I want you to--" and MOMO shuddered but couldn't speak or move to respond_--

--and sat down to play.

"That was beautiful," said Juli at the end of the first piece. By then the light outside had turned the color and thickness of amber as the sun sank across the lawn, although MOMO felt certain it had been morning just a few minutes ago. Juli brought her arm around MOMO's shoulders, drawing her gaze away from the window. "Your father will be proud of you when he gets home."

MOMO gasped. "Daddy?" She pulled her hands off the keys and turned toward her mother in awe. "Daddy's coming home?"

"Of course he is." Juli reached over and gently pushed a lock of MOMO's hair behind her ear. "He comes home every day around this time, remember? In fact, I think I just heard him come in."

"Really?" She leapt up from the bench, and Juli pointed toward a doorway at the far end of the room; MOMO hadn't noticed it until then. The afternoon light faded from the window as she crossed the threshold into the dark on the other side.

Her father stood facing a column of blue-green glass at the center of a circular platform, surrounded by computers and monitoring equipment. At first she thought the room was only a laboratory, but the walls shifted and slid under her gaze, unfolding into several rooms at once like the places she visited in dreams, and she recognized parts of her own bedroom, her garden in the courtyard, the Durandal's park, and perhaps a dozen other locations superimposed on the same space. The one trait they had in common was the feeling of contentment she associated with being there, a sense of comfort and security and warmth that seemed to radiate most of all from the blue-green column, as if it had been the source of those feelings all along, and everywhere else she had sought comfort was only a shadow, a shell of that place.

"Daddy," she whispered, and he turned at the sound of her voice and bent down to her, and his face looked as wise and kindly as she remembered from when she had met him in Labyrinthos. He hadn't recognized her then, and for a moment she didn't know if he would recognize her now.

"My daughter," he said, holding out his arms. "It's good to see you again."

MOMO swallowed, clutching the medallion at her collar. "You know who I am?"

Joachim nodded. "My second daughter, my dear MOMO. I've missed you."

"Is this--" She glanced around the platform, at the green glass column and the banks of monitors that surrounded it, mixed up with the flowerbeds from the courtyard and the furniture from her bedroom and the drifting lights of environmental bugs from the park. "This is where I was born, isn't it?"

"Yes, MOMO. This is where you were created, and this is where you belong. Here you will always be protected, surrounded by the ones you love. You'll never have to worry about being hurt or rejected or abandoned, and you'll never have to say goodbye to anyone ever again. And you will never have to grow older. You can stay just as you are now, forever."

"Forever?" Her gaze came to rest on the empty column. It looked warm, and she wanted to curl up inside it; suddenly she realized she was very tired.

"Forever." But it wasn't Joachim Mizrahi's voice anymore, and when she looked back in alarm, into red-lit eyes that were not her father's, it was too late, and the world went dark and glassy around her as she swayed and fell.

* * *

The operator spun from his station. "It's no use! I'm not even getting a response anymore."

"Life signs stable. Higher cognitive functions offline." One of the standard 100 series glanced at the monitor, then at the figure suspended in the sphere of blue light across the room. Juli had brought MOMO from the dive lab to the 100-series maintenance center in a different sector of the building. "Third resuscitation attempt unsuccessful."

Juli grabbed the operator's shoulder. "Try again. One more time. Please."

"Ma'am, she's already sustained extensive trauma to her emotional circuits. If we try to start her up again, the shock could--"

"Fine!" she snapped, making him flinch. In an instant her manner had gone from imploring to commanding. "We'll shut her down and send her to Vector for repairs. Hurry up!" Pulling her connection gear out of her coat pocket, she stormed across the control-room floor toward the exit. On the way out, she passed another technician walking in.

The technician placed a hand on Juli's arm, but it was his urgent look that stopped her. "Excuse me, you're Dr. Mizrahi?"

"Yes. What is it?"

"Ah, status report on your subject in the cybernetics lab, the, uh ... Ziggurat type 8?" The technician held out a holographic panel. Juli stared at it, frowned, then pushed it back at him and walked out without another word.


	15. 15

**15**

"As a result of the recent terrorist attacks, we now have incontrovertible evidence of coordinated acts of hostility against the Federation by the remaining followers of the Ormus religion. Therefore, I propose to the Executive Committee and the Parliament the following resolution, effective immediately: that we will respond with any and all force necessary to deter further aggression, and that we recognize the previous attacks as an implicit declaration of war against the Federation Government."

On the screen, the planetary representative from Tessedora folded her hands and settled back into her seat, and the transmission window went blank as the recording ended.

"I see what you mean," said Juli. "It's hard to argue with the need for self defense. I can understand why you didn't."

Helmer nodded, his hologram replacing the blank transmission window. "Well, I had pressure from the Second Miltian Parliament, not to mention public opinion. The vote was unanimous. The entire Federation's in favor of doing away with these madmen, and I don't blame them. Still ...."

"Yes, there's something not right about this. I have a feeling we've been provoked, and all of this is playing into our enemies' hands somehow." Juli sighed. "But it's not just Ormus I'm worried about."

"You're right. The hardliners in Parliament seem positively thrilled by all this," said Helmer. "They have almost enough support to start another witch hunt."

"Yes, thank you for reminding me. I needed something else to keep me up at night."

He grimaced. "Sorry. Any word from Vector?"

"I got a call from Third Division yesterday." She bit her lip and stared at the edge of her desktop, fighting to keep it in focus. The Vector representative had explained that they had managed to restart MOMO's operating system in her original frame, but her responses were all automatic, pre-programmed reflexes based on calculations from her artificial personality layer. "They can start her up, but they can't revive her consciousness," said Juli. "They haven't determined yet what the problem is."

Helmer was silent for a long time. "I'm very sorry to hear that."

"Don't humor me." The edge of the desk had begun to waver and she didn't dare look up now. "I think I'd prefer if we just talked politics," she said, knowing it would offend him. They had been more than just political allies for years, and even Juli had to admit she considered him a friend as well as a colleague. But right now, she was too upset to care. She _wanted_ to offend someone. She felt as though she had swallowed broken glass and the sharp edges were pushing their way through her skin. It was how she used to feel all the time, and she wondered how she had ever been able to stand it.

"I understand." If her remark had upset him, he gave no indication, and Juli felt both disappointed and relieved. "In that case, we certainly have a lot to discuss. I gave Captain Roman a copy of the program you decoded, the one you used to access the shadow network. You should have seen the look on her face when I told her what you'd uncovered; you'd think she had just been handed the Rosetta Stone."

Juli tried to imagine Lapis Roman with any expression other than a scowl of determination, and finally gave up and decided to take Helmer's word for it. "The Rosetta Stone?"

"An artifact that made it possible to translate certain ancient languages on Lost Jerusalem. I'm surprised you hadn't heard of it. Anyway, she's been using the program to monitor communications on the shadow network, in the hope that it may give us some clues as to where they plan on attacking next."

"I suppose that will come in useful now that we're at war with them," Juli said tightly.

"I don't doubt that it will." He paused. "I understand you're meeting with the Contact Subcommittee today?"

"Yes, later this afternoon. I'm giving them the same report I sent to you." She had spent the last few days preparing it, incorporating the data they had obtained from monitoring the shadow network and the records she had been able to salvage from the dive. The only thing she hadn't mentioned explicitly in the report was the identity of the consciousness that MOMO and Ziggy had encountered on the network, and that was because she could still hardly believe it herself.

As for the rest, the existence of an underground network coordinating the Ormus groups was no longer a secret, not since the attacks a few days ago; but only a few people, Juli among them, knew the extent to which it had metastasized across the AMN. After today the SOCE would know as well, but she could already predict that they would advise keeping it a secret for as long as possible. If the public found out, the backlash against the AMN Development Committee and Administrative Bureau would be immense. The press might even accuse the Development Committee--and by implication Vector and Scientia, perhaps even Juli herself--of collaborating with Ormus, concealing the other network until it had grown out of control.

Juli had enough experience in politics to know it was only a matter of time before word got out anyway, and if the AMN Development Committee didn't want to look guilty, they would have to defend themselves with the truth, by finding out who was responsible before the rumors started. She hadn't yet ruled out the possibility that the Nov-OS corporation might be involved; even if Nov-OS hadn't created the shadow network, they might still be using it to communicate with the terrorists. After speaking with Doctus a few days ago, Juli had done additional research on her own, querying the records from the AMN Bureau's ruling on corporate networks, and now she understood how Nov-OS had managed to sway the ruling in its own favor; the company had contributed enough to the campaign funds of certain leading members of Parliament to purchase a substantial reserve of goodwill and a degree of legal immunity as well. But she hadn't found any evidence that would link them directly to Ormus, and even if she had, it wouldn't necessarily make any difference. Nov-OS had more than enough political clout to emerge unscathed from any accusation she could level at them. With reluctance, Juli had filed away the lead on Nov-OS as a dead end, at least for now.

MOMO's upgrade to the AMN operating system had prevented any further hacking attempts against the axis, but the rest of the network remained unsecured. The AMN Bureau had advised imposing a lockdown on network activity, warning against prolonged or unnecessary dives and issuing a list of safety precautions for communication and hyperspace travel. Scientia and the AMN Division at Vector had begun research on a more comprehensive solution, but it would be difficult without MOMO's help; no one knew the operating system as well as she did. At best, her sacrifice had bought time for the Federation and its allies to consider their next move.

Which meant, effectively, that Juli was on her own. She didn't expect much help from the government, preoccupied as it was in preparation for the grim festivities of war. She thought Ziggy might have some idea of how to proceed, but the few disjointed answers she had managed to draw out from him hadn't eased her concerns, and she hadn't wanted to question him further in his present state, when he hardly seemed to understand what she was asking. Still, there was one subject on which he remained coherent, even insistent.

"He's targeting me," he had said, in the monotone he used when he was too upset to let on that he was upset, "which means he'll probably try to target you. So I want you to be on guard constantly. Don't let anything distract you, even for a moment. Especially if you're using the AMN. We don't know where or how he'll attack next."

But aside from warning her about Voyager, Ziggy had hardly spoken at all since the dive. Juli could only guess at how deeply MOMO's disappearance had affected him. He hadn't mentioned her name once after it happened; if he knew how MOMO had managed to get lost in the shadow network, he never explained. When Juli sat down to talk to him about MOMO's condition and the updates on her status from Vector, he had listened silently, impassively, without any response. Juli couldn't tell if he even comprehended what she was saying, or if he had somehow managed to block MOMO from his mind entirely.

At least now she understood why he had so much difficulty retrieving his own memories; it was as if he built a mental wall around anything painful and pretended that whatever was behind the wall didn't exist anymore, until eventually he forgot there had ever been a wall in the first place. By now his mind must be a labyrinth of barriers and shut-down places and dead ends, memories he was unwilling and unable to recall. If that was how he had managed to endure all these years, she didn't envy him, as much as she wished she could forget her own pain as easily.

He had asked to accompany her to work these last few days, and Juli had obliged at first, as much for his own peace of mind as for hers. But while he was on bodyguard duty he acted as if he didn't know her; he stood in the anteroom outside her personal office and barely acknowledged her presence when she walked by. Today she had insisted that he stay at home and get some rest, as much for her own peace of mind as for his.

After she got off the line with Helmer, she glanced over her report one more time, then cleared a space on her desk and put her head down and buried her face in her arms. Juli hadn't cried properly since before the incident, but the overwhelming urge to do so had surfaced countless times in the last few days. Each time, she felt only the sharpness in her eyes that preceded tears, the tightness in her throat that sobbing would have relieved, but the relief never arrived. When Sakura died she had wept almost constantly for days, but now she found herself incapable of release, unable to let go because she still held on to the hope that MOMO could be repaired.

With Ziggy, at least Juli had been able to execute a logout sequence to evacuate him from the network safely, but she had failed to make contact with MOMO, and after agonizing over the decision, Juli had disconnected her before the network grew too unstable to get her out at all. As a result of either the forced logout or whatever had happened to her consciousness before that, MOMO's neural network had suffered massive damage, and Juli had sent her back to Vector's Third Division for emergency maintenance. Her new transgenic body was undergoing repairs now, and in the meantime, at Juli's instruction, the employees of Vector had attempted to revive MOMO's consciousness by transferring her root data into her previous frame. So far they had only managed to induce a few knee-jerk reactions by activating her synthetic personality; if MOMO was still there, she was as impossible to reach as Sakura had been.

Along with everything else--the threat from the shadow network, the impending crisis of war--it was too much for Juli to handle on her own, and she felt perversely justified in blaming MOMO and Ziggy for abandoning her when she needed their support, even though she knew it wasn't really their fault. The last few days had left her beyond exhaustion; she wanted to sleep for just one night without being interrupted by emergency calls or kept awake by the turmoil of her own thoughts, but she didn't expect to be granted that opportunity any time soon.

She got up, went down the hall to the restroom, splashed water on her face. When she came back to her office, she downloaded her report for the SOCE onto her connection gear along with the backup data for a few other projects she was working on, and then she straightened up her desk and headed out. The meeting began in a few hours, which gave her just enough time to get to the orbital elevator terminal and endure the long ride to the station; at least she could get some work done on the way up.

* * *

She returned to their apartment later than usual that evening, as she always did on days when she had meetings with the Subcommittee--a consequence of the eight-hour commute to the orbital tower and back. The living room was dark when she arrived, but he was still awake, dimly outlined in the glare of artificial light from beyond the courtyard. He wasn't in the habit of turning on lights when he was at home by himself, and sometimes it unnerved her to find him standing there in the dark. But it must seem like daylight to him, with his enhanced night vision.

He didn't move when she came in, although he must have been aware of her presence. For the moment he was an inanimate object, as static and permanent as everything else in the room, no less a fixture of his surroundings than the furniture and the piano. _The piano_--and her throat tightened when she saw it, standing there in the middle of the room like the skeleton of some extinct animal from Lost Jerusalem. Relics from the past.

Although she knew he could sense her approach, she crossed the floor as quietly as possible and came up beside him, bringing her arm around his waist. He didn't resist or pull away, but he didn't respond in kind either. It was like trying to embrace a post.

"I requested time off to visit the _Dämmerung_ tomorrow," she said, half to herself, because she didn't expect him to answer. "You're welcome to come along."

He responded exactly as she thought he would--with no response at all. Under normal circumstances he might have been surprised, since Juli rarely missed a day at the office, and even when she did, it didn't mean she wouldn't be working. It just meant she would be filing most of her reports for the day from her connection gear instead of from her office terminal. But if the news surprised him now, he didn't let it show. He stood motionless, eyes fixed straight ahead.

She tried to follow his gaze but it led nowhere, out into the blur of lights over the city. Then she saw the blank dark spaces of the flowerbeds like open graves in the courtyard, and remembered the cold snap a few nights ago, the feathery traces of frost on the window glass in the morning, her breath turning white as she stepped outside. She turned back toward him, straining to see into his eyes, but there was nothing in them either. "Jan," she whispered, "please ...." But she couldn't go on; she didn't know what she was pleading for, only that she wanted something that wasn't there.

He tilted his head in her direction, regarded her with uncertainty, as if he had never seen her before. "What is it?" he said, and there was no accusation in the words, no meaning attached to them at all. A prompt for his next set of instructions.

"Nothing," said Juli. Swallowing broken glass, she left him there and went alone to bed.

* * *

Because she didn't have to go to her office the next morning, she rose an hour later than usual, and for once she found him awake first, unless he had never gone to sleep at all. He stood where she had left him, in front of the door to the courtyard, facing indoors now, watching her pace back and forth across the apartment as she got ready to leave. When she went to her bedroom to do her hair and makeup, he followed her down the hall and stopped in the doorway like an observer at an unfamiliar ritual.

"I'd like to go with you."

Startled, she turned from the mirror. "You're--"

"I'm concerned it might not be safe for you to travel alone. I'm willing to accompany you if necessary."

Juli had turned around holding a comb, and now she gripped it so hard the teeth bit into her palm. "Fine." She glanced back at the mirror and jerked the comb through her hair in terse, angry strokes. "Do what you want."

He was silent, and when she turned around again he had gone from the doorway. Less than an hour later, they both left the apartment together.


	16. 16

**16**

They arrived in the waiting room for one of the maintenance labs in the _Dämmerung_'s Third Division sector, and Juli went to check in at the front desk while Ziggy sat down in one of the benches along the perimeter. A few other individuals, mostly Realians, occupied other seats around the room. He noticed a tiny blue-haired figure seated in a chair nearby, her head bowed and her hands bunched in her lap, and she reminded him so much of MOMO--of the way MOMO had looked when he first made contact with her on Pleroma--that he had to turn away. Now he understood more clearly than ever how Juli had felt, years ago, when she lamented seeing copies of her dead daughter stationed all over the galaxy.

He looked over at Juli, wondering if she had noticed the other 100-series Realian yet, but she stood at the desk with her back turned. For the last few days he had dreaded the thought of what might happen to her when she was out of his sight and out of reach, but as much as he wanted to protect her, he couldn't shadow her everywhere. And even if he could, when it came down to it, what good would it do anyway? If Voyager had marked Juli as the next casualty in his war of attrition, no amount of protection would forestall the inevitable. Perhaps he was already holding her for ransom in plain sight, allowing her to remain under the illusion of freedom and safety until he ran out of patience.

He hadn't told Juli a fraction of what he feared, and had let on to her only what he judged necessary for her own protection. Not that he thought she would be able to defend herself any more than he could, but at least she would be more vigilant knowing her life might be in danger. Their only hope now was to confront Voyager before he recovered enough to make another move, and there was no way of knowing how much time they had.

He was frustrated. He had been trying to think of a strategy for days, and for once he had encountered an equation that appeared to have no solution. To hell with numbers and tactics; he needed a miracle.

When she had finished at the desk, Juli strode briskly over and sat beside him, keeping more distance between them than she usually did. He had noticed her withdrawal since last night, and he could tell, by her stiff posture and the tension that surrounded her like a static charge, that she was profoundly angry. He knew it was his fault, but he also knew there wasn't much he could do to console her right now, and if he tried, it would only make the situation worse.

The 100-series Realian had noticed Juli as well, and wandered over to the bench a few minutes after Juli sat down. "Um, excuse me," said the Realian, "but are you MOMO's parents?"

Juli's expression hardened. "We are her legally registered guardians, that's correct." More accurately, MOMO and Ziggy were both registered to Juli, but she rarely ever described their relationship that way.

The 100 series lifted her head slightly, with a timid smile. "I was hoping I'd get to meet you. I'm just here for some minor adjustments to my personality layer, but I heard you would be coming to visit her. All the 100 series have been searching for MOMO on the AMN. We can sense her presence subconsciously, so we know she's still there, but ... we can't seem to reach her or determine where she is."

"It's all right." Juli smiled in return, her voice taking on an unexpected warmth. She rested a hand on the Realian's arm and looked into her eyes. "Thank you for trying. We're trying our hardest too."

"I'm glad," said the Realian. "Please don't worry, Dr. Mizrahi. We all think she'll come back."

Juli lowered her eyes. "I hope so."

One of the Vector employees at the front desk called out a serial number.

"That's my appointment," said the Realian. "It was nice to meet you." Without waiting for a reply, she walked away across the room and followed a Vector-uniformed technician down a hallway at the far end.

Ziggy had witnessed the conversation in silence, his initial concern for Juli turning to astonishment at her reaction. He recalled what she had said the other night, about letting go of her pain over losing Sakura, and he wondered if that had anything to do with her actions just now. Perhaps she was just acting in a manner calculated to trigger the 100 series' programmed response to displays of maternal kindness, but he didn't think she was that cynical anymore--if she ever really had been in the first place.

They were called back to the desk a few minutes later, and another uniformed employee led them down the same hallway to a small unfurnished white room with a second door opposite the one they had entered from. They waited there, alone, still standing a measured distance apart, while the employee went ahead through the second door and returned with MOMO.

Ziggy was used to seeing her in her adult form, and even after meeting her likeness in the waiting room, it startled him to see her like this; she looked much smaller than he remembered, and she wore the dark blue dress she had worn in her cell on Pleroma. She took a few careful steps into the room and stared at the two of them, her expression as flat and unchanging as if it had been painted on.

He couldn't look away this time, as much as a part of him wanted to. If he did, he would be giving up hope that she was still there somewhere--either lost in the imaginary domain or buried inside herself, or both. "MOMO," he said softly, and she glanced in his direction for a moment, but without recognition.

"I'm afraid she probably won't be able to recognize either of you," said the Vector employee, in the tone of someone trying to deliver bad news as gently as possible. "We were experiencing some issues with her artificial personality layer again, so we had to disconnect it."

Juli drew her lips into a tight line. "I see. And how long do you anticipate it will take to resolve those issues?"

"Well, ah ... honestly, at this point, it's hard to say." The employee gave a nervous shrug. "Dr. Mizrahi, with your permission, we'd like to keep her here a while longer. We strongly feel that it would be advisable to run more tests on her central operating system."

Juli nodded. "You have my permission. Please consult me before you proceed any further."

The employee left them alone with MOMO for a few minutes after that, but her lack of response deterred them from trying to interact with her. They didn't get much farther than a few words of small talk that received no reply, a few gestures of affection she didn't return. When they were ready to leave, however, Juli bent down and hugged her tightly, then stood and walked straight out of the room without another glance in her direction. Ziggy started out after Juli, but on a sudden impulse, after he had crossed the threshold into the hallway, he turned and reached toward MOMO again, as he had done years ago during her analysis on Second Miltia.

MOMO didn't look at him and didn't reach back. He stood there with his arm outstretched until the door slid into place again, blocking her from his view.

* * *

They didn't speak to each other at all for the rest of the day, not on the ride back through hyperspace from the _Dämmerung_ or on the descent from the orbital station to Fifth Jerusalem's surface, and their silence followed them all the way back to the apartment. He went to his own room at once, but he couldn't sleep. He hadn't slept much since the dive, and when he did his nightmares returned in force.

But he must have drifted off at some point, because he awoke to find that hours had passed since he last checked the time. It was after midnight, and the room was dark except for a single lighted screen on the console near his maintenance box. For the last few days he had remained on constant alert, monitoring for the slightest disturbances in his surroundings even while he slept; the light from the screen must have disrupted his sensors.

He got up and walked over to the console. The control unit for his bed also functioned as a standard desktop model and AMN terminal when it wasn't executing maintenance routines, and when he approached the screen he found his mail procurator waiting to inform him that he had an unread message on the server. The AI that retrieved his mail appeared in the form of a white dog bearing a suspicious resemblance to Alby. He would have chosen a more utilitarian interface, but MOMO had set it up for him before he was familiar with the new AMN protocols, and he had never bothered to change her settings even after he learned how to do so. Now it reminded him of her, and he intercepted a renewed stab of grief before he had a chance to acknowledge it.

The message, a plain-text file with an attachment, came from a concealed address within Scientia. Anonymous correspondence was one of their organizational quirks, a holdover from the days when they were still considered a terrorist organization, but he didn't need a return address to determine the sender; no one else in Scientia had any reason to contact him now. Relief cut through the anxiety that had weighed on his mind for days. He hadn't heard from Doctus since the dive incident, and Juli hadn't been able to reach her at the designated AMN address she used for holographic correspondence, but at least she was feeling well enough to send mail.

_Captain,_

He stared at the greeting for nearly a minute, reading it over until he finally blinked and pulled his gaze down to the rest of the message. He didn't think he would ever get used to being addressed by that title again.

_I had intended to give this to you the next time we met, but my repairs are taking longer than anticipated, and if my suspicions are correct, we may not have time for a proper reunion. In that case, consider this a part of your payment for services rendered to Scientia during your recent mission to Patmos. It's the result of a side project I've been working on for a number of years, and I hope it will prove useful to you now._

_This file contains the final report on the Inquiry into the Voyager Incidents by the Commission for Truth Under Scientia, code name INVICTUS. Some of this information may already be familiar to you, given your past involvement in the case. As for the rest, we've been trying to leak as much of it onto the net as possible, because unlike your Federation Government, we believe the world has a right to know the truth. Still, a lot of the data I'm giving you is still highly classified. We broke a few laws to get our hands on it, and needless to say, if anyone found out you had it, or traced it back to Scientia, we'd all be in a lot of trouble. Feel free to share it with Dr. M and anyone else you're absolutely certain you can trust, but be careful._

_Oh, and don't bother to thank me for this. All I did was finish the work we started together, and we couldn't have done it without you. Another mutual friend of ours contributed as well, when he contacted me a few years ago. I think he must have known, by then, the choice he was going to have to make, and he wanted me to tell you, in case he didn't have a chance to explain it to you himself. He wanted you to know that he was sorry--for what, he didn't say, but maybe you'll know._

_As for me, I'm just sorry I didn't act sooner. If I had, maybe we could have stopped this before it got out of hand. But there's no use dwelling in regrets about the past, as I'm sure you understand all too well. The only thing we can do with the past is learn from it, and with that in mind, I hope you'll use this information wisely. It may not serve any other purpose than to clarify what you already know, but maybe the truth is enough. Don't forget what I told you to remember. As a former associate of mine used to say,_ Veritas liberabit vos.

There was no signature, only a sideways figure eight, the infinity symbol.

He closed the file, stepped back from the console, rested his head in his hands. Whatever information they had uncovered, he didn't think he could deal with it now. He was about to sit down again and try to get some rest, or at least think things over more carefully, when he detected movement in the hallway outside.

When Juli's signal stopped in the living room, he stepped out into the hall as quietly as he could manage. It was past the time when she should have been asleep, although he knew she hadn't been sleeping well these last few nights either. Many times he had sensed her lying awake in bed or pacing the floor of her study, her vital signs betraying her distress. He hadn't known what to do then, or how to comfort her, and it made him feel helpless; he could detect her signal across the hall, but they might have been on opposite sides of the universe for all he could do to reach her.

At the doorway into the living room he stopped and looked in at her. Cast in the blue-green glow of the holographic display panel above the keyboard, Juli seemed as faint and insubstantial as a hologram herself, her face a luminous reflection in the dark. She had turned down the electronic volume control so that the notes barely sounded when she touched the keys, but his auditory sensors picked them up and amplified them so that he could hear them across the room.

After the first few chords, he recognized one of the pieces MOMO had been practicing earlier. In Juli's hands the song changed shape, became something entirely different from what MOMO had played, even though the notes were the same.

"I didn't know you could play," he said, when she had finished the piece.

"I couldn't sleep," she said, as if that answered his remark. Although she had stopped playing, she kept her head bowed over the keyboard, her gaze withdrawn under lowered eyelids. "My husband wrote that song for Sakura. He used to say that if she learned music, it would be almost as if she could speak to us. I tried to believe that, but really, I just wanted to hear her voice. I wanted to see her eyes light up when she looked at me. Maybe I was just being selfish, but I was desperate for some sign of connection with her. I would have done anything if I thought it would give her the chance to lead a normal life. Do you understand?" She looked up suddenly, straight into his eyes. "I wonder if you really can. I used to believe it was something I could only understand as a mother, having brought a life into the world, a part of my own life--a part of myself. I never thought I'd be able to feel that way about MOMO. But when I saw her today, that's exactly how I felt."

"I guess I wouldn't understand."

"But you do know what it's like to love a child as if they were your own. You're the one who taught me that." She hesitated, and her eyes shone strangely in the light from the display. "Jan. You don't have to hide your pain from me. Don't make me go through this alone. If--if you just shut down on me, I don't know if I can take it. I can't stand the thought of losing anyone else." She turned off the hologram, pushed back the bench as she stood. Stray light from the windows fell on her face and shoulders, tracing the curve of her neck down to the space between the lapels of her sleeping robe. "I know you're not going to live forever, but damn it, at least while you're here, _be_ here. Otherwise you're just wasting the life you have left."

He stepped out from the hallway into the skewed pane of light falling across the floor. Juli walked around to the other side of the piano and stood in front of him, sharp and angry and defiant. He took her shoulders in both hands, more gently with his left hand than with his right. "Let me help you," he said. "Please."

Her breathing still came up short, but her gaze softened, lost some of its edge. "How?"

"I don't know. I'm not sure if I can still protect you. But there must be something ...." Clarity arrived then, his first clear memory of the dive operation surfacing out of the gray haze that had lingered in his mind since he returned. "Juli. Listen. Doctus was trying to tell me something, before .... I think it's important."

"Can it wait?" She moved a step closer.

"How long?"

"Just a little while," she whispered, tucking her face against his shoulder and tracing her fingertips down his back. "Just for now."

He closed his eyes. "It can wait."


	17. 17

**17**

By now, Sellers thought, he should have learned to anticipate to the Executor's sudden appearances--always when Sellers was in the midst of working on something important, and somehow, always when he least expected it--but he nearly fell out of his hover-chair when the black silhouette shimmered into focus on the screen, purple-haloed like the eclipse of a dark star, obscuring his latest reports.

He sat up, clutching at the front of his robe. "Ah, Senior Network Adviser. What can I do for you at this hour?" Sellers detested the sound of his own voice, sickly sweet and ingratiating; what he really wanted to say was _Bloody hell, Adviser, for the love of that so-called God you're always raving about would you please stop trying to give a crippled old man a heart attack._ But of course he never said it.

"I think you already know what I'm here for." No hint of mockery in the soft monotone; if anything, it sounded as though the Executor was trying to conceal his own irritation. "I see from your report that the preparations are nearly complete. But we're running out of time. Even the measures I took to distract the Federation may not be enough."

Sellers' temper rose, surfacing for a moment through the oily skim of flattery on his voice. "I told you I was working as fast as I could, Adviser. Remember, I'm but a humble man of science; I can't work miracles."

"But I can." Spoken, as usual, with such conviction Sellers didn't question for a moment that the Executor believed it; and after seeing how skillfully he had coordinated those attacks on the military a few days ago, Sellers almost believed it himself. "Now, listen carefully. There are elements within the Federation that continue to threaten our objectives. The files that were stolen from Patmos appear to have found their way into the hands of the Contact Subcommittee. I trust you know what that means."

His fists curled against the armrests of his chair. "You don't mean-- The Mizrahi woman."

"The high priestess of Babylon," said the Executor. "_The mother of harlots and of the abominations of the earth._"

It took Sellers a moment to realize the Executor was reciting from that hallucinatory holy book again, the same one Mizrahi had been obsessed with during the last days of his headlong flight into madness; the coincidence made Sellers detest them both even more. Still, this time he had to admit the Executor had chosen a fitting epithet for Mizrahi's widow. Sellers hated her almost as much as he hated his old colleague, although he had to admire her ruthless dedication to the pursuit of her goals. In her younger years she had been almost as much an opportunist as he was, shamelessly taking advantage of anyone and everyone who might help her serve her own interests. The way she'd left that doddering old madman to his dollmaking and volunteered her imbecile daughter as a test subject for Yuriev's experiments had been masterful, the ultimate offering before the altar of scientific progress. Years later, when Sellers himself had defected to Yuriev's side, Yuriev had spoken of her with admiration, even with longing, and Sellers had felt a stab of envy. In a different world he might have wanted her for himself, if he hadn't despised her for belonging to Joachim first.

"You have a plan to get rid of her?" said Sellers, letting on more of his enthusiasm than he intended.

"Be patient. As it happens, she's working closely with some of our own agents in the Federation government. She doesn't know it, of course, but they've been watching her all this time, waiting to tear her to pieces at my command."

To his surprise, Sellers felt his heart racing. He had never taken any particular enjoyment in the suffering of others, except to study it in a detached and clinical manner when it occurred as a side effect of his research; but suddenly he wanted very much to see the Mizrahi woman ruined. He took a deep breath, thankful for the shaded lenses that concealed his eyes, so the Executor wouldn't see the polished glint of Sellers' madness buried like a jewel in the depths. Sellers had admitted years ago that he was insane, perhaps as mad as Joachim Mizrahi himself; but unlike Mizrahi, he had learned to harness that madness, to use it as a catalyst for changing the world. "Are you aware, Adviser," he said, venturing out cautiously at first, "that Juli Mizrahi is in possession of certain data which could prove extremely valuable to our own research?"

"It wouldn't surprise me."

"And I can retrieve it for you. After all, what good will it do in the hands of the government? They'll just seize her files after she's apprehended, and all of her brilliant contributions to the advancement of science for the last seventeen years will simply go to waste. That would be a terrible shame, don't you agree?"

The Executor was silent for a moment, his purple-black aura shifting like daylight glimpsed from the floor of the ocean. "Can you retrieve the data without jeopardizing your own safety or the integrity of our project?"

"Of course." Sellers contrived to sound affronted. "You're talking to an expert."

"Very well. But I warn you: don't do anything reckless."

"Just what do you think I am?" He braced himself against the arms of his chair, scowling.

Deep resonant laughter from the terminal, as if the Executor were enjoying a private joke at Sellers' expense, and then the transmission cut off.

Sellers turned his back on the screen. _A fool. A lunatic. A deluded old invalid strapped to a chair._ The rest of the world could offer any number of answers to his question, but not the one he wanted. Not the one he deserved.


	18. 18

**18**

"This is amazing," said Juli the next day. "There must be years' worth of research in here. Dive records, UMN traces, classified reports ... how on earth did Scientia get hold of all this?" She sat on the edge of her chair, hands perched over the keyboard.

"It's possible they've been collecting data for the last hundred years," Ziggy said from behind her, watching the screen over her shoulder. They were in Juli's office in the SOCE building. "That would give them plenty of time to assemble a comprehensive report."

Juli exhaled in a rush. "I'll say." She pulled her gaze from the screen for a moment and twisted around in her chair to look up at him. "I had no idea you and Doctus were already acquainted. She's an old friend of yours?"

"It's hard to explain," he said, and when Juli's eyes took on a glint of suspicion, he added, "Not like _that_."

She turned back to the screen, shaking her head. "I won't pry. The only old friend of yours I'm concerned about is the one who's currently occupying the lower recesses of the AMN." She paged through an official report with the redacted portions spliced back in. "I can see why most of this information is classified. Did you know he was involved with Yuriev and the Salvators? Thanks to their influence in Parliament, he got away with running an illegal narcotics operation for decades while the government turned a blind eye. No wonder they wanted to cover this up--it makes the government look like an accomplice."

"I know," he said. "They tried to shut down my department's investigation." He seemed distracted, and after a moment he said, "There was something in one of those files, a medical profile, I think--something about his ability to manipulate the UMN. That may be how he was able to construct an entire network on his own. And there's something else I noticed, when ... we encountered him on the AMN a few days ago. It seems that while his reach in the imaginary domain extends as far as the shadow network itself, his actual presence there is limited. There's still a part of his consciousness--his identity, maybe--that can only be in one part of the net at a time. That appears to be what's controlling the rest of the network."

Juli stared at him in astonishment. It was more than he usually said at one time, and she wondered if he had been working it out in his mind since he came back from the dive. "So you're saying this ... finite part of him might be his weakness."

"I'm saying it might be all that's left of his original self-image," he said. "If there are any weaknesses residing in his personality from when he was still human, we may be able to exploit them."

"I'll keep that in mind." She turned back to the screen. "So what is this Project Apocryphos you were talking about? Something from back then?"

"I don't think so. At least, I don't remember it, but that doesn't mean ...." Behind her, he moved a step closer. "Can you look it up?"

"Let me check." She entered the term into a search field and waited while the program compiled a list of results. "There are two entries on file. It's mentioned in the index for the data you retrieved from Patmos, but there's no explanation given; that part must have been erased before you copied it."

"I see. What about the other entry?" He leaned closer, and she felt the gentle pressure of his hand on her shoulder. "It's dated over a hundred years ago. That's from before we started the investigation, when he was still working with Yuriev."

Juli frowned, scrolling through the file. "I gathered that. It looks like Yuriev had him doing some kind of research--looking for specific information on the UMN." She turned again, bracing her arm against the desktop. "Do you suppose they were trying to reconstruct Lemegeton? That would put them a century ahead of my husband's research. But they must not have been very successful."

His grip on her shoulder tightened. "Do you mind if I look at this?"

"Go ahead." As she moved her chair out of the way, her connection gear signaled an incoming call. She picked it up from the desktop beside her and glanced at the screen. "That's strange," she murmured, half to herself. The chairman of the DIRE usually sent calls to her office terminal, not her personal line, which she had instructed him to use only in emergencies if she couldn't be reached elsewhere.

Ziggy glanced toward the door. "Should I step outside for a minute?"

"Don't bother." Juli turned her chair around so that he'd be out of view. "You have my permission to eavesdrop." She accepted the call. "Good morning, Chairman. In the future I'd prefer if you called--"

"Dr. ... Mizrahi ... oh, thank God ...." The chairman's hologram was blurred and shaky, his face a strained mask.

"Chairman? What's going on?"

"It's ... terrible ... I've done ... something terrible ...." he said between ragged, torn-off breaths. From behind the screen, she saw Ziggy start forward preemptively. "I called ... to warn you, before ...."

"Just calm down, chairman," said Juli, trying to reassure herself at the same time. "Now can you tell me what's going on?"

"... Betrayed you ... all of you ... heh ...." He gave a pained cough of laughter. "I bet ... you didn't know ... you've spent the past year and a half ... aiding the Federation's enemies ... did you?"

Juli pushed back her chair and stood up. "What in the world are you talking about?"

"It's ironic ... the DIRE ... it was supposed to stand for goodwill ... reconciliation ... instead ... just a front, all this time ...." The chairman broke into another spasm of laughter.

"A front? What do you mean? A front for what?" Juli risked another glance at Ziggy; his expression of mild dismay would have been equivalent to outright horror from anyone else.

"You didn't know ... heh." The chairman closed his eyes, trying to catch his breath. His face shone with perspiration. "You'll find out ... soon enough ... the whole world will know ... thought they'd be safe ... hiding in plain sight ... but maybe ... if I confess my sins ... maybe God will forgive me ... if God even exists ... in this world ... anymore ...."

Juli almost dropped the connection gear; instead she held it closer to her face, gave it a rough shake. "You--damn it, you were on their side? Then tell me--who was responsible for the capture of the Patmos delegation? Who's aiding Ormus? Is it Nov-OS? Answer me! Chairman!"

He opened his eyes, and when he did he seemed to be staring past her, his irises blurred islands in the bloodshot white. His mouth strained around silence for a moment before the words broke through. "_The ten horns which you saw are ten kings who have received no authority as yet, but they receive authority for one hour as kings with the beast. These are of one mind, and they will give their power and authority to the beast. ... And the ten horns ... these will hate the harlot, make her desolate and naked, eat her flesh and burn her with fire._"

The chairman's hologram sputtered and went out. Juli stared at the blank screen until the connection gear slipped from her shaking fingers and clattered to the floor; she sank back into her chair without bothering to pick it up.

As soon as the call ended, Ziggy sprinted over to her. "Juli, he was--"

"I know," she said, gripping the armrests of the chair while she waited for her heartbeat to slow down. "But the chairman--why? Do you think he was really ...."

"In league with the anti-Federation groups?" He stared at the connection gear as if he thought it might explode or catch fire. "I don't know. But if someone in the government has been aiding them, that might explain the new equipment we found in the Patmos base."

"Among the many other things it would explain." She managed to take a few deep breaths and began to feel calmer. Then she realized the implications of what the chairman had said, and smiled bitterly. "I believe I've just been linked to yet another organization with ties to Ormus. Assuming it's true what he said about the DIRE being a ... a front."

"That would make sense. Think about it. Ever since it was established, the DIRE has been the first government agency to make contact with any planetary system that's had its access to the network restored. That would give them a perfect opportunity to distribute supplies to any armed groups in the region before anyone else gets there."

"Damn it, I can't believe this." She buried her face in her hands. The world reeled around her, no longer turning on its side but spinning constantly now, too fast for her to recover her bearings. "No, I do believe it. But I don't want to, I can't--"

He touched her shoulder, but she was still on edge from the call and recoiled instinctively. "Sorry," he said, pulling his hand away. "Do you want me to get you something?"

Juli shook her head without looking up. "No, it's--"

Her connection gear signaled another call, and they both looked warily toward the floor, then back at each other.

"Are you going to--"

"I'll get it," said Juli, deciding the instant before she spoke. She bent down and picked it up, feeling a momentary flush of relief when she saw the incoming address. "Helmer."

"Dr. Mizrahi, I've got some bad news. I see you're already sitting down, so I'll skip that part. Oh--Ziggurat 8, I didn't see you there. You might want to sit down."

"No need, thanks."

"Helmer, is this about what I think it's about?" said Juli. "Because if so, it's not exactly news to me."

"Well, that depends. Are you aware that the chairman of the DIRE just issued a statement implicating himself and nine other department members in a plot against the Federation?"

"I see." Juli grimaced. "That must have been what he called to warn me about."

"He called you?"

"Don't ask. So, what crimes against humanity have I been accused of aiding and abetting this time?"

"None so far that I know of," said Helmer. "Your name wasn't on that list, so you might actually get a break this time."

"Thank you, but I wouldn't count on it."

"I wouldn't if I were you either. I just wanted to make sure you were aware of it. Be careful, Dr. Mizrahi--I have a feeling there's more going on than we know about."

"I'm almost certain of it," she said. "But thank you for the warning."

After Helmer signed off, Juli slumped against the back of her chair. "Tell me this can't get any worse," she said. Before Ziggy could reassure her, the door to her office chimed, announcing a visitor. "Who's there?"

"Federation Police, ma'am," said a man's voice on the intercom. "We'd like to ask you a few questions."

Juli swore under her breath. Louder, she said, "Just a minute." She and Ziggy exchanged worried glances, and he went over to the computer and closed the INVICTUS report, then deleted the copy of the file from the local server for good measure. Straightening, he gave her an all-clear signal. She got up to open the door, and two men and a woman in gray uniforms stepped into the office.

The highest-ranking officer introduced himself. "I'm an inspector with the Galaxy Federation Police. Regrettably, I'm here to inform you that the chairman of the Department of Interplanetary Reconciliation has just been found dead in his office, of undetermined causes. My subordinates and I traced a call from his office to your mobile address shortly before his death, and we were hoping you could provide us with some information."

"Certainly," said Juli, tight-lipped. She stepped back to invite the officers into the room, but the other man and the woman had already walked past her.

The female officer pointed at Ziggy, then turned to Juli with an uncertain look, as if wondering which of them to address. "Your, uh-- He'll have to wait outside."

"He can understand you perfectly well, you know," said Juli, a dangerous edge in her voice. "Sorry, Jan."

In silence he followed the two lower-ranking officers out to the anteroom, making eye contact with Juli one last time before the door closed between them.

"Relax," said the inspector when he and Juli were alone, "and have a seat, if you'd like. As of now, we have no reason to suspect you of any direct involvement in the chairman's death. I'd just like to ask you a few questions, since you were apparently the last person to speak to him. Did you happen to notice anything unusual about his behavior?"

She remained standing. "I'm not sure I know what you mean by unusual, officer. But his speech and conduct were extremely erratic. If you want my professional opinion--" She stopped. After an awkward moment of silence, the inspector's AMN phone rang a second time.

"If you'll excuse me for a moment." He retrieved the phone from his belt, glanced at the screen, frowned. When he looked back at her, the lines of anxiety had deepened around his eyes. "My apologies, ma'am. I've been instructed to take you into custody."

"What?" She backed into the edge of the desktop. "With all due respect, sir, what is the meaning of this?"

Before the inspector could answer, the office door slid open again behind him. Startled, he turned, and Ziggy's fist caught him in the jaw and sent him sprawling forward, the AMN phone clattering out of his hand.

Ziggy stared at the prone figure, then unclenched his fist and swiveled his left hand experimentally. "Sorry," he muttered, and Juli couldn't tell whether he was apologizing to her or to the officer.

"Jan, what did you--" She gripped the edge of the desk, gaping at Ziggy as if he'd lost his mind. "That's a Federation Police officer! What the hell were you thinking?"

"I know. They got here too quickly. This must have been planned out. It's too much like what happened the first time."

"The first time?"

"I'll tell you about it later. In the meantime, we should find a way out of here." Stepping around the unconscious officer, he looked back toward the doorway into the adjacent room. "I had to knock the others out too. I tried to go easy on them, but I don't know how much time we'll have before they recover."

"Wonderful," said Juli. "Now that we're fugitives from the law, I suppose you have a plan to get us out of here and into hiding?"

"Ah ... no, sorry. I didn't get that far yet." His face had gone a paler shade than usual and his voice sounded strained; it was the closest she had ever come to seeing him panic since MOMO's analysis on Second Miltia three years ago. "Just give me a minute." On the floor near his feet, the officer groaned and lay still.

"No need." Juli grabbed her connection gear and dialed the address of the last call. "Helmer, listen, we're in trouble--"

"I was afraid of that. Are you still in your office?"

"Yes, for the moment, but we don't plan on staying much longer. You wouldn't happen to have any agents planted in the Federation Police, would you?"

"Not in the capital, I'm afraid."

Juli swore under her breath; so much for her plan.

"Don't panic yet. I'll try to get in touch with Captain Roman. I believe she has some contacts in the local military. If you can get outside, they might be able to help you from there. I'll have her call you as soon as I hear from her."

Juli took a deep breath, fighting back the tremors in her voice. "Thank you, Helmer."

Ziggy had gone over to the window. "It looks like they've surrounded the building." It wasn't fair, Juli thought, that he could manage to sound calm regardless of what he was saying.

"The Federation Police?" She joined him at the window; from here she could just make out the GFPD insignia on the cars and AMWS units that lined the boulevard around the office complex. "Then we'll have to take the emergency stairs down to the parking garage. But you'll have to change first."

This time it was his turn to stare at her in disbelief. "What?"

Juli pointed to the inspector. "His uniform. It's just a precaution in case we're spotted on the way out."

He hesitated, then removed the officer's jacket and pulled it on over his armored vest. "I'm not sure this is going to work."

"They still use your type in law enforcement, don't they?" She walked over to her desk and began clearing out her files, backing up the data onto her connection gear before she deleted them from her office computer. "Besides, I'm the one they're looking for, not you. As long as they think I'm in your custody .... Well, if we can get downstairs without getting caught, we won't have to worry about that."

He was still straightening the officer's jacket when Juli stepped back from the desk. It was too tight across the chest and shoulders, and too short in the arms, but it was convincing enough from the waist up; he hadn't bothered to attempt covering his legs.

Before he could protest, she raked her fingers through his hair so that the shorter locks in front fell to either side of his forehead. "There. Now even I don't recognize you." She bit her lip to stifle a nervous laugh. "Sorry, that was a joke. That uniform looks good on you," she lied. "Does it bring back memories?"

"A little." He blinked through the stray bangs falling across his eyes, then gave a shrug that looked like a concealed shudder. "Let's go before they wake up."

Juli pocketed her connection gear, and they started for the door.


	19. 19

**19**

They emerged from the stairwell into the parking garage. "Wait here," said Ziggy. Pushing back his hair--it kept falling into his eyes, distracting him--he edged out farther and peered around a wall into the subterranean cavern of metal and concrete. A few heat signatures flickered in the distance, near the limits of his range. He waved for Juli to follow, but she gestured back and held up her connection gear, the screen casting a thin blue glow in the shadow of the wall.

He crept back to where she stood, near the entrance to the stairs. Over the connection gear, she was speaking to another woman in a voice too low to carry across the lot. "Helmer said you'd be able to help us."

"I'll do what I can." The other woman's voice sounded familiar, even with the volume on the connection gear turned to barely above a whisper, but Ziggy couldn't remember where he had heard it before. "Your best bet is to get out of Fifth Jerusalem as soon as possible, but you can't use the orbital spaceport; they'll be waiting for you there. Now, there's a Marine base outside the city with a mass driver used for launching military vessels. They're currently getting ready to deploy the Fifth Jerusalem fleet to the outer regions, so you should be able to escape aboard one of the transport units and then get a ride to neutral territory once you're out of range. I'll give you the coordinates of the base and the names of my contacts there, but you'll have to handle the rest on your own."

"Understood," said Juli. "You've done more than enough already. Thank you, Captain."

"Don't mention it," said the captain, and abruptly signed off.

Juli put away her connection gear and looked up. "We're going to have to stop at home first. I have important files there too, and they're bound to search our apartment when they realize we've gone missing."

"Right. What about Alby?"

She gave him an uncomprehending look. "The dog? You're worried about the _dog_ at a time like this?"

"I just thought ... MOMO would be upset if ...." He stopped when he saw a pained expression flash across her eyes, as brief and sudden as lightning. "I'm sorry."

Juli sighed. "It's fine."

They started across the parking garage, taking cover behind parked cars and sections of walls. The signals he had noticed earlier were moving closer now, and even if the two of them reached Juli's car without incident, they would still have to get past the police barricade outside.

Halfway across the lot, he grabbed Juli's shoulder and ducked behind the nearest vehicle. "Over there," he whispered, pointing. "I don't think they saw us."

She leaned out to look past him, at a group of uniformed figures a few aisles away. "It must be strange to have the Federation Police against you."

The corners of his mouth tightened, in a faint approximation of a grimace. "Not as strange as you might think."

"It's happened before?" She inched nearer to him, clutching his right arm, the weight of her head on his shoulder an unexpected comfort in spite of their present circumstances.

"I told you they tried to shut down the investigation, right?" He felt her nod, the sharp jab of her chin; even that was reassuring somehow. "Yuriev was behind it, that time. He pressured us from his position in the government and had us all arrested, including the chief of my department." The recollection surfaced like a sudden iceberg, shearing his breath away; he had pushed it from his mind after Michtam, and even then, he hadn't been able to remember it this clearly. But now, crouched on his knees behind the vehicle, he remembered kneeling on the concrete floor of the prison cell, the crumpled figure in his arms, the moment when he felt the life leave the body.

Juli pressed closer still, and for a moment he felt her breathing against his neck. "Are you all right? You're shaking."

He hadn't realized it, but when he held up his right hand he saw what she meant. "Yeah, I ... I'm fine." Absently he raked his hair out of his eyes again; it felt like picking up an old habit, like something he had done a long time ago.

The uniformed figures moved across the parking lot. "Someone's over there," he heard one of them say, too quietly for ordinary human hearing to detect at this range. Juli hadn't heard it, but she must have noticed when he suddenly tensed.

"They've spotted us," he said under his breath. "Don't move."

"What are you going to do?"

He didn't answer. Holding himself motionless against the side of the car, he monitored the officers as they ducked behind another car across the aisle.

"This is the Federation Police," said one of them, in a voice that echoed across the lot. "We know where you're hiding. Come out now and you won't be harmed."

He pulled away from Juli and stood, positioning himself so that the car blocked the lower half of his body. "Don't shoot," he said. "I'm an officer. I'm with the counterterrorism department."

The officer stepped out into the aisle and the others followed, pistols drawn. "Man, they called you guys out here? This must be a big deal."

"So it would seem," said Ziggy. "I understand several members of the DIRE were implicated in a terrorist plot against the Federation."

"That's right, and it turns out Committee Member Mizrahi was the ringleader. We've suspected it for years--hell, you know, your department's been in charge of the investigation since before the Ormus hearings. She wasn't even mentioned in the chairman's report, but after he died, documents were found in his office that directly linked her to the incident in Patmos along with a string of other attacks. He called her right before he kicked the bucket, too." The officer shook her head at the scandal. "The way I see it, that woman has 'guilty' written all over her. It's about time we had enough evidence to take her down."

"I see."

"Yeah, well ... you hear the latest? Mizrahi escaped from her office, and apparently she has a guard with her, some kind of Life Recycling freak that knocked out three of our guys." The woman shuddered, still gripping her pistol. "I hope they don't come this way. I'd hate to meet that thing in a place like this."

Behind him, Juli suppressed a cough. One or two of the officers glanced around nervously for a few seconds, then dismissed the noise when they couldn't figure out which direction it had come from.

Ziggy glared at them. "In any case, I doubt your superiors sent you here to stand around talking. You'd better continue with your assignment."

"Ah ... right, sir. Of course." The officer turned away looking suitably chastised, but one of the other officers stopped her.

"Captain, look," he said, holding out a government-issue connection gear. "That's him. He's even wearing the inspector's uniform."

The woman glared at the screen, and her face paled even in the dim orange glow of the lights overhead. She swung around, aiming her pistol. "All right, who the hell are you? Get out in front of the car where I can see you. And drop your weapons."

Ziggy considered that the last command would present some difficulty, as several of his weapons were semi-permanently attached to his body. Before he could respond, a flash lit up the inside of the garage as one of the cars, parked a few spaces to the right of where the officers stood, disintegrated in a cloud of flame and shrapnel. The officers flinched and staggered back from the explosion. While they were still reeling, another vehicle erupted to their left, and a third behind them.

Ziggy didn't realize he was standing in shock until Juli grabbed his arm and hauled him after her. "Now!" she hissed. "While they're distracted."

"How long have you had a vaporizer plug-in installed on your connection gear?" he said, staggering to keep up with her until he had recovered his footing.

"Ever since Miyuki sold me on the idea that having the ability to trigger explosions by remote control couldn't possibly be a bad thing." She was pushing her strides to match his now, her chain belt flashing at her waist as she ran.

"This was recently?"

"Not really. I just never found a use for it before. Over here," she added, steering him toward her car. She opened the doors by remote and climbed in on the driver's side, starting the engine as soon as she sat down; he took shotgun, and the car lifted off the pavement before the doors had pulled back into place.

"We might have some difficulty getting out if the building's still surrounded." He glanced out the rear window, but the officers hadn't caught up with them yet.

"I'm aware of that," said Juli, shifting her grip on the controls. "I was hoping you'd have figured out an exit strategy by now."

He nodded. Patches of light flickered and jumped against the windows as the car accelerated, the darkness in between like missing frames in a damaged holographic film. When he closed his eyes, he could still feel the light stuttering against his eyelids, and it reminded him of the way his memories played out in his dreams sometimes, in bursts of bright light and clarity spaced between absences. "I've thought of something. But it might be rough."

"That's fine." With a shrug, Juli steered the car down an exit ramp into the white glare of midday. "As long as we get out alive."

He opened the passenger-side door and leaned out, transferring his missile launcher onto his shoulder from its storage point on the AMN. As Juli's car emerged onto the street, several GFPD vehicles and AMWS units moved to block the exit. He fired before they had a chance to close off the street ahead; the missiles ripped through the pavement, and the recoil jolted the car to the side, but Juli recovered control and ploughed through the smoke and debris.

Gunshots spattered out of the confusion. Most of the shots rebounded off the bulletproof hull of the car; a few struck Ziggy before he could transfer his weapon out and pull himself back inside, but his armor was bullet-resistant and so was he, to an extent. Still, when they were clear of the office complex he doubled over in his seat, so out of breath it hurt, and tasting something viscous and metallic at the back of his mouth. Static jammed his sensors; his vision kept dissolving into silvery-black clots that pulsed angrily against his eyes even when he closed them.

"All right, that was a little rougher than I thought," said Juli, her voice sounding high and far-off above the ringing in his ears. When he didn't answer right away, she touched his shoulder and pulled her hand back in alarm. "Jan, are you okay?"

He tried to nod but ended up wincing instead. "I'll be fine. Keep driving." Swallowing the acrid taste in his mouth, he blinked and sat up. Through the fading static he watched her lean over to check the rearview camera on the dashboard, and heard her swear again.

"They're still following us. And you're in no condition to pull another stunt like the one that got us out of there, I can see that." She sounded irritated, but for once he didn't think she was upset with him. "We're going to have to jump out. I'll set the drive program to autopilot; if we're lucky, they won't notice we're gone for a while. Do you think you can make it the rest of the way on foot?"

He nodded again, with less pain this time. "Can you?"

"Don't worry about me." Squinting in the glare over the windshield, she reached across the dashboard and reconfigured the autopilot settings. "Just start looking for a place where we can get out."

They approached the First Business District at ground level, the sloping embankments to either side of the highway supporting buildings and overpasses higher up. He checked the rearview display and his own radar; when their pursuit fell back behind a curve in the road, he tapped Juli's arm. "On my side. Hurry."

She climbed across the seat as he opened the door. He jumped out, shielding her in his arms; the car was moving fast, and the impact when he hit the ground might have killed a normal person, but the mechanisms in his legs absorbed most of it, and he registered only a slight jolting sensation and a numbness in his organic parts. For a moment the silver-black spots swam in his eyes again; he staggered a few steps and caught his balance, then scaled the embankment, pulling Juli and himself onto the lowest tier above the road. They set off running again before the signals he'd been tracking on his sensors rounded the bend in the highway below.


	20. 20

**20**

"Are you still awake?"

He didn't answer at first, and she went back to rifling through the contents of the med kit she had just bought from the First Business District convenience store. She had told him to wait here, on the deserted upper level of an open-air parking structure off the main pedestrian thoroughfare, while she made a run for provisions, using her anonymous credit account so the purchases couldn't be traced back to her.

On the way to the store, she had walked past an AMN screen displaying a headline in large red type along with the most unflattering hologram of herself she had ever seen. She couldn't decide which was worse, the picture or the ungainly attempt at alliteration in the headline--"Madwoman Mizrahi missing"--but she was suddenly glad she had left her overcoat in the garage with Ziggy; the Mizrahi emblem stood out like a bull's eye on the back. Her appearance was plain enough that she tended not to stand out in crowds--not the way he did, at least--and she was even less recognizable without the coat and belt she wore as regularly as a uniform, and with her hair in disarray from their escape; still, she didn't feel safe wandering around the city alone. When she returned to the garage with the supplies from the convenience store, she had found him waiting where she had left him, seated in a dark corner of the lot.

"I'm awake. Sorry. I guess I drifted off for a minute."

Juli paused, still holding the canister of nanospray. He had turned his head aside and wouldn't look at her, but there was nothing else around for him to stare at; she followed his gaze to a blank wall, then gave up and went back to what she was doing.

She loosened the right side of his vest and pulled it back from the shoulder, where the impact from the bullets had bruised the skin without breaking it. "Tell me if this makes you uncomfortable."

"I don't mind." But he kept staring at the wall, his face hard and ashen with suppressed pain.

In all the time they had been together, as close as they were, Juli had rarely ever seen him out of uniform--strange, she thought, because in many other ways she knew him more intimately than anyone else she had ever known. She had overseen his maintenance routines countless times, so she had no illusions about what went on under his skin; it wasn't very pretty, cybernetic engineering of the previous century being what it was. The science of the early Life Recycling era had been crude and experimental compared with the sterile efficiency of modern Realian technology, but Juli had never understood what embarrassed him more--that most of his body had been replaced with machines, or that a part of it was still human.

He didn't speak or make eye contact again until Juli had finished treating his injuries. Thanking her, he pulled up his sleeve and re-fastened the straps on his collar, then stood. He had peeled off the ill-fitting Federation Police jacket and dropped it somewhere between here and the freeway, and for once she had to admit that his usual attire was an improvement. Until they got off Fifth Jerusalem, though, it would make him too conspicuous. She handed him one of the other packages from the convenience store. "Put this on."

He complied without asking for an explanation. The new coat reached to just above his ankles, concealing the clumsy architecture of his legs and making him look passably human. Juli had ordered a change of clothes as well, more casual than the style she usually wore; she put them on over her dress and combed out her hair, trying to get it to part on the opposite side.

"We'll probably have to rent a car to get to the apartment," she said, still fighting with the comb, "and definitely to get to the base. It's a long way out from the city proper."

Ziggy nodded, staring down at his coat; it stuck out suspiciously around the thighs, as if he was trying to smuggle machine parts underneath it by strapping them to his legs, and Juli hoped no one would notice. He blinked and pushed his bangs out of his eyes; he'd been doing that a lot since they left the office. "Do you mind if I use that comb when you're finished?"

* * *

The rental car hovered to a stop in front of the apartment complex late in the afternoon, when the distant buildings of the capital reared like gold mountains out of the dimming light. Juli had to use her personal identification card to get through the entrance, so anyone checking the access records would know she had stopped here; but she intended to be long gone by then.

When the elevator doors opened on their hallway, Ziggy stepped out ahead of her. "Someone's been here. Recently."

"You can tell that?" She followed him across the hall, keeping her voice low. "Are they still here?"

"I don't think so." He keyed the access code into the wall console by the door, and they walked into the apartment.

The living room resembled an alien landscape in the reddening glow from outside. Juli realized she was almost never home at this time of the day; she worked until later in the evening, when the light had already faded. It startled her to see the place she had called home for the past year rendered suddenly unfamiliar, as if she had never lived here before. She tried not to look at the heavy, draped form in the center of the room, but its gravity took up most of the space around it and drew her gaze against her will.

She felt his hand come to rest on her shoulder again. "Come on," he said gently. He left her and went over to the glass door that gave onto the courtyard; when he opened it, Alby appeared from nowhere as usual, limping now, and whining a frantic alarm. Whoever had been here must have shoved him outside to keep him out of the way of their investigation. Ziggy bent down and gathered the dog into his arms.

Carrying Alby, he followed Juli into her office. Clusters of screens flickered above her desktop, disgorging the contents of her confidential files across the room, and the sight made her feel ill. They must have been in such a hurry that they hadn't bothered to shut down the computers after they'd ransacked the data for whatever they were looking for.

While she downloaded the remaining data to her connection gear and erased it from the terminals, Ziggy peered into MOMO's room across the hall. "It looks like they checked her files too. Was she working on anything involving sensitive information?"

"Not that I know of," Juli called back, watching the progress bars on the file-transfer screens creep agonizingly toward completion, "other than decoding that program from the Patmos base." Any proprietary data related to the AMN project was kept under AAA-class encryption in the databases at Vector and the AMN Administrative Bureau, and Scientia had an even higher level of encryption for its own top-secret files; of course, it was all irrelevant if the shadow network could pass through any level of classification indiscriminately. Juli had kept her own files at home behind a partition inaccessible to the rest of the AMN, in order to deter any hacking attempts, but anyone seeking access could still reach the partitioned area from her home computer if they managed to break through the password protection.

When the files had finished downloading, she took her connection gear and stepped into the hallway. For a moment she thought of going back to her bedroom to pack her belongings--she didn't know how long she would be gone or whether she would be able to come back--but decided against it. They couldn't afford to waste time here. She headed in the opposite direction, into the living room.

Ziggy walked in behind her, struggling to keep Alby from leaping out of his arms; the dog seemed agitated, squirming and pawing to be let loose. Suddenly Ziggy flinched and drew a sharp, cut-off breath, and Alby bounded out of his hold and half-ran, half-limped to the courtyard door, barking and turning circles around himself in his frenzy.

"Are you all right?" Juli asked again.

Ziggy nodded absently, staring at the two semicircles of tiny indentations in his glove. "I think that's the first time he's ever bitten me." Juli wondered whether he had even felt it--he had already endured enough gunshots today to kill an ordinary man several times over, and had escaped with only a few bruises--until she realized it wasn't the physical pain that startled him. He let his hand drop and looked over at the door. Alby's barking grew increasingly frantic; he reared on his hind legs and battered the glass with his forepaws.

"I wonder what he's so upset about." Juli walked to the door and gazed outside. The light had gone from the courtyard, and the vast sloping canyons of the city glowed neon in the dusk.

"Juli, get back! Someone's out there!"

"What?" She backed away from the glass, but she had already seen it, a silhouette rising above the courtyard wall against the glare of the city lights. The courtyard doors opened automatically, triggered by an outside mechanism--probably the same they'd used to force their way into the apartment before, Juli thought, in the moment she had to think before the intruder cleared the wall and drifted down in front of her. Alby cowered at her heels, his entire small body trembling as he barked himself hoarse.

"You really ought to teach that little brute some manners." Sellers aimed a disapproving look at the dog, and Alby whimpered and backed away in silence, favoring his injured leg. "Good evening, Dr. Mizrahi. I almost didn't recognize you in that awful disguise. But I'm afraid you got here too late to secure your precious data; it's all in the hands of my employers now. And we intend to make good use of it."

Juli dug her fingernails into her palms. "So you're still profiting by stealing other people's work, you shameless fraud. I should have known you were involved in this."

"Get away from him, Juli," said Ziggy from behind her. "That man is insane."

"I know." She didn't turn around or step aside. "And if I'd known he was still alive, I would have suspected his involvement with Ormus from the beginning."

Sellers pulled a grimace. "It seems there are some advantages to being legally declared dead. For the past year, I've been able to pursue my research with impunity. I've all but surpassed Joachim Mizrahi's work now."

"How dare you show your face here," she said, feeling her pulse rise with her anger. "What are you plotting with Ormus?"

"As if I'd tell you. I only waited for you to get here so I could see the look on your face when you realized your life's work had been snatched out from under your feet. I don't know where you plan on going now, but it had better be someplace where they've never heard the name 'Mizrahi'--if there even is such a place left in the universe." He sneered and tipped forward in his hover-chair. "The world won't remember you for your contributions to science, Dr. Mizrahi. Not after today. You'll be cursed in the same breath as your madman husband."

She heard Ziggy's breath catch and knew he was at least as enraged as she was, but he appeared to have abandoned trying to convince her to stand down.

"Joachim never liked you," she said, "and now I see why. It seems there's at least one thing he and I would have agreed on." She forced a bitter laugh. "You were the real madmen, you and all the others who unleashed that nightmare on Miltia. You destroyed the world and let my husband take the blame for it."

One corner of Sellers' mouth stabbed upward in wry amusement. "Well, now, this is unexpected. I never thought I'd hear you of all people defending his reputation. As I recall, you were one of his most vocal detractors in the early years after Miltia. I daresay you were the first to turn around and spit on his grave."

"Maybe I was," she said fiercely, and he looked taken aback for a moment; he must have expected her to deny it. "I never said he was blameless. For my part, neither was I. But his crimes were nothing compared to yours."

He laughed. "How flattering of you to say so. But I've hardly even begun. When I've completed my life's work, I'll have achieved more than that feeble-minded old fool ever dared to imagine."

"Project Apocryphos," said Ziggy, his voice raw with dismay. "That's what you're working on, isn't it? You're in league with Voyager!"

Sellers inclined his head, reflections sliding over the dark shells of his glasses. "I don't know who you're referring to," he said, "but I'm in league with myself. Everyone else is just a means for me to achieve the desired end."

"Then he's using you too, do you realize that?"

"I don't doubt that he is." The chair rose higher off the courtyard floor, the glow from the lighted circle at its base spreading out like a flashlight beam. "That's just the way the world works, I'm afraid. So long for now, Dr. Mizrahi; perhaps we'll meet again. In the meantime, make sure you check the news tomorrow. You'll be in it." He pushed a button on the armrest of his hover-chair, and the glass door swished back into place. Juli watched until he had vanished over the wall, and then the anger and tension went out of her and she sank to her knees.

She was aware of Ziggy standing behind her. After a moment he knelt as well and brought his arms around her. "I'm sorry," he said. The unexpected tenderness pushed her over the edge, and her view of the courtyard blurred behind her tears. He must have sensed it, because he held her closer as if to steady her. "I know it's hard, but try to get a hold of yourself. He was manipulating your emotions, trying to make you react. The things he said--"

"Were true. You don't have to make excuses for me. I'm paying for the things I did wrong, just like my husband." She wrung her eyelids shut and wiped her face. "There's no excuse for ignorance and blindness; I'm just as bad as the ones who knew what they were doing all along. Do you remember Senir last year?"

He nodded. Senir had been the destination of one of Juli's diplomatic visits on behalf of the DIRE, one of several on which Ziggy had accompanied her because the situation on the ground was too dangerous for her to go alone. They had spent a week sequestered in a run-down conference hotel in the planet's bombed-out shell of a capital, startling at the sound of gunfire in the streets below until it became part of the background noise, the shots as frequent and predictable as the sounds of traffic.

Night after night they had stood by the window in their hotel room; in the darkened streets of Senir's capital, under the leaden canopy of clouds that never lifted, in neighborhoods lit only by the red haze of burning buildings, Ziggy had monitored the skirmishes between militarized street gangs and local peacekeeping forces deployed by the planetary government, the anthill struggles of innumerable radar signals. Juli had stood beside him in darkness--they had to keep the lights turned off at night because the mobs on the street would hurl homemade explosive devices at any lighted window they saw--while he narrated to her, as best he could, in the cold language of statistics and combat formations, the self-destruction of a world.

The scheduled reconciliation talks had never happened, and at last the Federation had pulled its representatives from the Senir region, evacuating Juli and Ziggy and the other DIRE personnel from the city by air transport. They had emerged from the hotel shaken and irritable and sore; their week-long confinement had exhausted even their patience for each other, and they had said little on the way back to Fifth Jerusalem. It had been a relief just to get above Senir's permanent cloud cover; from below, it was easy to forget there was a world beyond the war in the streets.

Senir became one of the Federation's most widely publicized diplomatic failures. After its government collapsed, a local post-Ormus group had seized control of the planet and imposed an AMN blackout on the region, cutting off communications and attacking any Federation ship that gated out within its range. Now Juli wondered if the timing had been more than just a coincidence; the militants had seemed unusually well-supplied and coordinated for a region that had been isolated until a few months prior.

She stared into the darkness falling across the courtyard. "I wonder if our entire civilization is going to end up like they did. Maybe we're doomed to spend our last days throwing bombs at each other in the dark."

"Are you thinking about the war resolution?"

"Not just that," she said. "The DIRE .... Even our attempts at bringing the world back together were just a cover for tearing it apart. I don't believe this is all their work, either--I mean Ormus, Voyager, whoever's behind all this, it's not only their fault. I think it's human nature to seek our own destruction. They're just exploiting the weaknesses that exist in all of us."

"You're not the same as them. Don't make the mistake of thinking that you are, just because ...."

Juli raised her head. In the glass she could just discern the outlines of their reflections, a hollow conjoined shape superimposed on the empty yard. "Jan, you're .... Right now, this is all I have left. You, and us. So whatever happens now, I want ...." She didn't go on, and she realized she didn't have to.

"I know." Standing, he helped her to her feet. "We can't stay here any longer. They may already know we're here."

She nodded and looked back over the courtyard wall. "He made it sound as though he was offering us a chance to escape. I'd say it was generous of him, but he was probably just toying with us."

"Where should we go?"

"Where did _you_ go? The first time, I mean."

He seemed startled, and for a moment she regretted having brought it up again, remembering how it had upset him before, when he tried to tell her about it. Then his expression firmed. "Right. We should head to the base and try to get a ride back to the _Dämmerung_, to Vector and Scientia. We'll be safe there for now."

"Scientia," said Juli, with a hollow laugh. "I guess they would know what to do with a couple of suspected terrorists."

"She'll know, anyway." He turned away as he spoke, and Juli had the feeling he was talking to himself, for his own reassurance. Kneeling by the piano, he tried to coax Alby out from under the bench, where he had retreated shortly after Sellers arrived. Juli took a last look around the apartment; in the thickening shadows, lit only by the glare from outside, it had already settled into an air of abandonment. She felt like a trespasser, a stranger in a place that was no longer home.


	21. 21

**21**

From his office window, Representative Helmer had watched the history of Second Miltia since its inception. He had stood here, a newly elected representative on a newly terraformed world, nearly seventeen years ago, when the first gray towers pushed above the horizon and the first roads lifted from the ground. Development of the surrounding areas had followed, filling in the outlines of city blocks so rapidly that at first the skyline never looked the same from one day to the next. Later the expansion became more gradual, the changes sprawling over weeks and months and years instead of days, but even now, the city and the world were in constant motion, as clouds and water and stars moved while appearing to stand still. They were moving now, in the tableau framed by the window: the clouds, the sky, the people on the ground in the streets of Mitrei.

They would be going about their business as always, even while the screens in every shop window and public square ran twenty-four-hour news broadcasts from the war front. Events were unfolding now at the edge of the civilized universe--at a distance that would have seemed unfathomable in another era, but that the advent of hyperspace travel had rendered merely inconvenient, a few gate-jumps from any given point--that would resonate here like the aftershocks of a wave, in ways even the analysts on the news and the experts in the government couldn't predict. But for now life on Second Miltia continued undisturbed, not because the citizens were indifferent or oblivious, but because they were all too aware of events in the world outside, and they were determined to preserve what stability they had while they had it.

After all, many of them had witnessed this before. Nearly two decades after the Miltia Conflict, a majority of Second Miltia's population still consisted of survivors from Old Miltia, people who had seen for themselves just how quickly the world could turn on itself, the rational order of things tipping over into madness. Second Miltia itself had neared that threshold on several occasions--when the Federation Fleet had surrounded the planet and the Song of Nephilim and the _Proto Merkabah_ appeared in the sky like omens, or when the UMN collapsed and left half the population stranded in space and the other half confined here, an island in the universe, until they had nearly succumbed, as Senir and countless other planets had done, to a strain of self-preservation that would have destroyed them. But they had survived through the worst of it; they always did.

Seventeen years wasn't a long history against the millennia-long history of humanity's exodus into space. It wasn't even a long time by the standards of a single human lifespan; in its current incarnation as a settled, terraformed planet, Second Miltia was younger than many of its inhabitants. But for a world that had emerged from one conflict and lived through another, it wasn't a bad start.

The AMN terminal on his desktop sounded a muted alert from behind him. He turned his chair away from the window and punched a button on the main control panel. "Good afternoon, Captain Roman. I was waiting for your call."

On the screen, Roman saluted curtly, a habit she had kept up long after he had assured her it wasn't necessary to defer to his status every time they spoke. "Sir, any word from Dr. Mizrahi?"

"Yes, I just received a call from her about an hour ago. They're on their way to the _Dämmerung_ now, thanks to your help."

"You're welcome, sir. It was no trouble." Her eyes showed a veneer of relief over a deeper concern. "That's something else, though, about the DIRE. Even I would never have suspected ...."

Helmer nodded gravely. "It's ironic, isn't it? Poor Dr. Mizrahi seemed absolutely devastated the last time I talked to her. All this time we were convinced someone in the government was aiding those groups, and they turned up in the last place we would have thought to look." The nine Ormus conspirators exposed in the chairman's report had been apprehended yesterday, at the same time as the raid on Juli's office; by morning all nine had died in custody, victims of brainjacking, like the chairman himself. The Federation Police never had a chance to question any of them.

"What about the chairman? From what you told me, it sounded like he was trying to warn Dr. Mizrahi about the others. Why would he do that if he was in on it?"

"I wish I knew," said Helmer. "The chairman was an old military comrade of mine. We worked together on the plan for postwar reparations after the Miltia Conflict, and back then he was one of the most vehemently anti-Ormus politicians I'd ever met. That's why I thought it was so strange when I heard he'd been supporting them." That, and there had been a delay between the release of the chairman's initial statement accusing the nine other DIRE members, and the falsified evidence linking Juli with Ormus that turned up in his office. Perhaps he really had been an enemy agent, but when ordered to set up Juli, he had suffered a last-minute attack of conscience and exposed the real conspirators instead. It still didn't make sense, though--and Helmer had already lost enough sleep last night trying to figure it out.

"Anyway," said Roman, "I'm afraid I may have some bad news. The Intelligence Bureau has been monitoring communications on the shadow network for the past few days, and we have reason to believe they may be planning another attack."

"Were you able to determine any details?"

"All we've been able to find out so far is that it has to do with something called 'Apocryphos.' We assume it's some kind of weapon they're building, but we don't know any of the specifications. And apparently, they--" She hesitated, and her gaze strayed off to the side. "Well, sir, I ... I don't know how to tell you this, but it appears their target may be Second Miltia."

He took a deep breath and leaned back in his chair, folding his hands in his lap. "Well, I can't say I wasn't expecting that. I suppose they're after the sealed column again. And you weren't able to find out anything else?"

"Not as pertains to their plan of attack, sir. We've been having some difficulty interpreting their broadcasts; they're in a cipher disguised as plain speech, but with a lot of those religious references thrown in. I'll inform you as soon as I know more, but in the meantime, I've already requested a transfer to the Fleet stationed in Second Miltia, so I can keep a closer watch on the situation from there."

"I understand. I'll do all I can to ensure your request gets approved."

"Thank you for your help, sir." She didn't smile--she almost never did--but she looked pleased.

"It's no trouble," he said, and he meant it. He always tried to keep a reserve of people on hand who owed him for one political favor or another; as long as he held plenty of strings, it was just a matter of pulling the right ones. He had learned early in his career that most of the important business of running a state got accomplished that way, and the endless hours of debating and deliberating that went on in Parliament were mostly for show. There wasn't much room for idealism in his job; he had made more compromises and concessions than he cared to remember, but he tried to do what he felt was right even if he had to accomplish it through underhanded means. "And really, I should be thanking you."

Roman gave a slight shake of her head, just enough to set her hair swaying. "Don't thank me now, sir. If we manage to prevent the next attack, then, maybe ...." She glanced off to the side again, apparently reading another screen. "Anyway, there's more. And this might actually be good news, depending on how you look at it."

He leaned forward again and brought up his hands to rest on the desktop. "Go on."

"Apparently, despite the existence of this imaginary-domain entity who's been coordinating all the Ormus groups, there's still some dissension in the ranks. It seems there are actually two factions: the majority who follow this Executor figure, and a minority who don't."

"A schism within the church," he said. "I understand it used to happen quite often when the faith was in its infancy on Lost Jerusalem."

Roman nodded. "I gathered that as well, though I'm afraid I don't know as much about ancient history as you do. From what we can tell, this minority faction appears to exist as an underground movement. The Executor's followers have denounced it as heresy, and they're doing their best to stamp it out, but it's been gathering strength in spite of their efforts. They have their own hierarchy, their own Inquisitors--they've even appointed a Patriarch, although for obvious reasons they've kept his true identity and whereabouts a secret."

Helmer sat up with renewed interest. "An opposition Patriarch? That's a bold move. It sounds like they're arguing that their movement has more legitimacy than the 'official' movement led by the Executor."

"Just what I thought. That's probably what has the Executor and his followers so outraged. That, and the new Patriarch chose a rather provocative name when he received his appointment. He's calling himself Julius."

Helmer closed his eyes, rubbed the bridge of his nose to relieve the mental haze of exhaustion. The last Patriarch with that name had been assassinated over one hundred years ago, in the terrorist incidents on Abraxas. "I suppose that means the new Julius shares the political views of his namesake?"

"To an extent. The Julian Sect is moderate by Ormus standards, although from the Federation's perspective it's just a milder brand of extremism. Still, this could be good news for us. It means our enemies aren't the unified front they'd like us to think they are. It means they have a weakness, and we might be able to use that against them. And that would make this war a lot quicker and less painful."

_Or longer and more costly in every sense of the word,_ thought Helmer. Roman was sharp, but she lacked experience--she had been too young to fight in the Miltia Conflict, and sometimes Helmer forgot that she hadn't seen a fraction of what he had, that she didn't fully appreciate the nuances of wartime politics. "You're proposing we support the opposition and hope the two factions destroy each other?"

"Something like that." She hesitated, and Helmer got the impression she hadn't actually thought that far ahead yet. "Unfortunately, we have no idea how to contact them. All of our information comes from reports we've been able to decipher on the majority side. We think the Julian Sect may be using radio signals that have been scrambled to avoid detection, or else they've devised some other way of communicating outside of the shadow network; regardless of the method, we haven't intercepted any of their broadcasts."

"I see. Well, perhaps it's best if we just focus on preventing the next attack for now."

"Yes, sir." She nodded again, with the sharp formality of a salute. "In the meantime, would you send my regards to Dr. Mizrahi the next time you speak with her?"

"Of course. You heard about her little girl, I'm sure?"

"MOMO? I remember when I met her, back when we got caught up in that mess with the Foundation and U-TIC. Seemed like a tough little kid."

"She was." On that day, too, Helmer had looked out at the capital from his office window; the sky had been unusually clear and bright, and it was strange to imagine the threat gathering behind it.

"Terrible," said Roman. "What happened to her, I mean. I feel sorry for Dr. Mizrahi, having to go through that twice."

"So do I." He had been there the first time, during the URTV project, overseeing the experiments on Juli's daughter Sakura. At thirty, Juli hadn't been young even then, but she had been innocent and vulnerable in ways she wasn't anymore. After Sakura died, Juli had become a different person. The grief had broken her down and recast her in stone, made her stronger but harder. It was only in the last three years that he had seen her open up again, and he knew it was because of MOMO's influence, because she had a family now. He didn't know what would happen if she lost another daughter; maybe she would close up forever. As her friend, he hated to imagine it. "I feel sorry for her too," he said. "And not just for Dr. Mizrahi. MOMO's work has been invaluable to the Federation. That little girl has done more to put the world back together than all the representatives in Parliament combined--including myself. We'll all be at a loss if they can't bring her back."

"Especially given our current situation."

"Right. Well, Vector's still working on her. They're not optimistic about her chances, but they haven't given up yet either. We'll just have to hope that something can be done."

* * *

This time the Executor waited until Sellers had his back to the screen, and startled him when he turned around.

_Bloody flaming hell--_ He broke off mid-thought and composed himself--he really was getting used to it now--but he hated knowing that the Executor must have seen him jump. "I take it your plan didn't go as well as expected," said Sellers mildly, trying not to sound as vindictive as he felt. Failure would have meant disaster for him as well, but it had given him some relief to learn that the Executor was capable of human error, that for all his pretensions to godliness, he could still misjudge the loyalties of his subordinates. That knowledge might come in handy if Sellers himself ever had to bail out. Which had begun to look increasingly like his only hope for survival once he'd finished his work on Apocryphos.

"And why do you say that?" A trace of amusement, one that might have accompanied the merest upturn of the mouth if the Executor's face hadn't been masked in shadows. "The chairman behaved exactly as I suspected he would. Unlike the others, he intended to betray us from the beginning. I only had to wait for the right moment."

Sellers didn't buy it. "You'd sacrifice them all to get rid of Mizrahi? The DIRE were our closest allies in the Federation. Now we've lost our main line of material support; there's no way we can get any more supplies to our bases without being detected. I hope you considered that when you made your plans."

"Of course I did. I based my decision on your reports, after all. We won't need the government's assistance now that Project Apocryphos is ready to deploy." What he didn't say--what he didn't have to say--was, _And soon we won't need your assistance either._ But he continued anyway, as if reading Sellers' thoughts. "Dr. Sellers, has it ever occurred to you that there is no such thing as loyalty?"

Sellers narrowed his eyes behind his glasses. "I'm not sure I understand what you're getting at."

"Really. I would have thought you'd understand it better than most, given your history. What I mean is that every relationship has an expiration date. A point at which the ties of subservience no longer hold. Given enough time and the right set of circumstances, even the most useful servant will turn against his master. Everyone, Sellers, is a traitor at heart. And the key to obtaining power is to use your subordinates while you have them under your command, and to dispose of them before they betray you."

"Of course, Adviser." Sellers forced a smile, although the back of his throat felt like a stretched elastic, and a cold sweat had started at his hairline. If the Executor wasn't Yuriev, he still knew enough to make Sellers uncomfortable. The sooner he could get out of here, the better--and just thinking that made him shift uneasily in his chair, with those unseen eyes piercing into him from behind the shadow as if they could read his intention.

"But I didn't call you to discuss my personal philosophy," the Executor went on, with a twist of contempt now. "While you were busy toying with Mizrahi, the Nov-OS database suffered another breach of security. A minor one, but troubling nonetheless. It seems an unknown party infiltrated our S-Line firewall last night and made off with certain sensitive information before the macrophages could respond. Were you aware of this?"

"I'm not in the habit of checking the NSN security logs, Adviser. If I'm not mistaken, that's part of your job description, not mine." He caught himself growing irritated again and toned down the sharpness in his voice. "Was it another Scientia raid?"

"Most likely, given the lack of any traceable signature. She'll be on Mizrahi's side as well. I would have expected no less from her."

Sellers didn't bother asking who she was; he didn't think he'd get a straight answer anyway. "What do you propose we do about it?"

"Nothing."

"Nothing? But--"

"We proceed as planned. They may not realize it now, but they're already too late. There's nothing they can do to stop us." The purple-black corona flickered; the shadow grew translucent and began to fade. "Make the final preparations. I'll contact you when I've taken care of a few personal matters of my own."

Before Sellers could wonder what kind of personal matters an individual who tried to pass himself off as a god might have, the Executor's hologram vanished, and Sellers felt a rush of relief in his absence. He had already begun to consider where he'd go after he escaped. Sellers knew better than anyone--except, perhaps, the Executor himself--what might happen when Apocryphos was activated, and he had no intention of staying around to determine the accuracy of his hypothesis. He might be insane, but he wasn't _that_ insane; at least, not yet.


	22. 22

**22**

To the rest of the world, Juli might as well have vanished into the abyss that had taken her husband seventeen years before. The news media had already begun referring to her in the past tense: Juli Mizrahi had become history overnight.

Ziggy was watching the evening news when he detected her signal approaching from the hallway. For a moment he considered closing the screen before she came in; she had stayed up late to watch the coverage the first few nights after they arrived on the _Dämmerung_. Perched on the edge of her bed in their private residential suite, her face taut and white in the flicker from the screen, she had seen her own past reinvented and replayed before the eyes of the world, her reputation distorted like an image in a carnival mirror. Ziggy had watched with her--not because he wanted to know, any more than he had wanted to know when she had offered to tell him about her previous marriage at their first meeting, three years ago--and he would have left the room if she had asked to be alone, but she never did. Even after she explained which details had been made up or fabricated by whomever leaked the information to the media, it shocked him to find out how little he knew about her history. He had known a little about her involvement in the URTV project and some of her work during the Miltia Conflict, but nearly everything between that time and the recent past was new to him.

"Well, now we're even," she had said, grimly but with a wry stab of humor. She had known about his past for years, at least the official version of the story; she had reviewed his files before she ever met him in person, and now she had the report from Doctus to fill in the rest. But she had never told him much about her own career; he had never asked. The charges of conspiracy with Ormus were baseless, but it was the supporting evidence against her character--the fallout from a career of minor indiscretions and liaisons across the hazy boundary between politics and private life--that seemed the most painful for her to admit. He had listened without judgment, and without condemnation, and it hadn't made him think any less of her.

"Police are still searching for the missing parties," the newscaster was saying as the door whisked open and Juli walked into the room, "and a full investigation into Mizrahi's records is under way. In the meantime, citizens have been encouraged to report any suspicious activities and are advised to proceed with caution. The suspect was last sighted in the company of a Ziggurat Industries cyborg with enhanced battle capabilities. Although legally registered to Mizrahi, the unit has been deployed in an unauthorized manner and is considered stolen property of the Federation Government, as well as being extremely dangerous ...."

"So now we're guilty of theft as well," said Juli, throwing her coat over the bed. She had started wearing it again since they left Fifth Jerusalem, displaying the Mizrahi symbol in defiance, almost with a kind of pride. No one except the staff of Vector and Scientia knew they were here, and no one on the _Dämmerung_ was about to risk incriminating Vector by revealing their presence; they were safe as long as they never left the colony.

Without turning around he remained standing, only half-watching the screen now, the rest of his attention trained on his own sensory input as he tracked her signal across the room. Glasses clinked in the dining area, and then she walked over to where he stood in front of the screen, balancing a drink in her hand. He eyed the cloudy liquid in the glass.

"You look like you could use one yourself," she said, without waiting for him to ask. "You'd appreciate this; it's called a mind eraser."

Ziggy shook his head. The last time Jr. and the _Elsa_ crew had tried to get him drunk, it had done strange things to his system; that had been two years ago, just before the _Elsa_ departed for Lost Jerusalem, and he hadn't let anyone talk him into it since. Even when he was still human, he had never been able to tolerate alcohol, and he had a vague, embarrassing, but inexplicably wistful memory of passing out after less than one drink with his subordinates, and waking up ....

Juli must have noticed his sudden reaction, but she misinterpreted it. "Relax, I wasn't being serious." Despite the circumstances of the last few days, she seemed undaunted, at least on the surface, if a few degrees more sarcastic than usual. Ziggy knew she had been placing calls to Helmer and to her own allies in Parliament, the only government officials she could still trust, in an attempt to sort out the conspiracy in the DIRE. They were scavenging for any fragments of evidence that would prove Juli's innocence, but Nov-OS had covered its tracks expertly, and Helmer's agents had recovered almost no new information so far.

In the meantime, Juli stopped by Third Division several times a day to check the progress on MOMO's repairs. By a strange turn of irony, the damage to MOMO's neural network had prevented her from being taken into government custody during the investigation. The police had sought a warrant to search MOMO's database for further evidence relating to Juli's crimes, but Realian-rights groups had protested, and the Vector personnel overseeing her repairs had explained that it would be impossible to conduct a complete scan of her data until her neural connections had been restored.

After watching the news for a few minutes, Juli set aside her glass. "Do you mind if I turn this off?"

"I don't mind." The news had given Juli's story a moment of reprieve while another broadcaster narrated an update on the Federation Fleet deployment, reciting a government press release over some footage of military vessels lifting off from a base that looked nearly identical to the one on Fifth Jerusalem.

"It seems one of Helmer's contacts finally managed to retrieve the AMN logs from the time of the chairman's death, and from the deaths of the other nine department members," said Juli, when the drone of the broadcast plunged abruptly into silence. "Just like the Patmos Delegation, there was no sign of any direct intrusion from the AMN. The only evidence of brainjacking came from the autopsy results, from the damage to the bodies themselves. But when we compared it with the corresponding data from the shadow network, we found a perfect correlation. Those patterns were unmistakable."

"So there's no doubt Voyager was behind this," said Ziggy, still staring at the AMN symbol on the blank screen.

She leaned into his side. "I didn't think there was any doubt in the first place. But now I think I understand why he was able to get past the safeguards programmed into the AMN. As long as his victims left dive traces in the shadow network--in other words, if at any point in time they came into direct contact with Voyager's consciousness--he should have been able to hack into their minds the same way he did when he was operating on the UMN."

Ziggy understood what she was getting at. "But if they had never dived into the shadow network, they'd be immune to his attacks. He'd be unable to trace their access records. Unless he could manage to seize control of the AMN somehow, or ...." He stopped. "Do you suppose that means the Patmos Delegation was in on it too?" If the delegates themselves had been Ormus agents as well, they might have been exposed to the shadow network before they staged their own capture, collaborating in the plot without realizing that they were about to be killed along with the refugees.

"It's possible," said Juli, "unless they were forced to dive after they were captured. And I still don't understand the chairman's involvement in all this." She walked back to the bed and sat down, drawing up her knees to her chest. Now she sounded tired and frustrated, the ragged edge of her impatience wearing through. "Helmer thought the chairman might have been trying to manipulate Ormus by pretending to support them--making them more of a threat than they were, just so the government would take action to eradicate them completely. A lot of the hardliners in Parliament said the same thing last year: that we weren't coming down hard enough on the remaining Ormus supporters, so they'd just end up slipping through the cracks."

He crossed the room after her, remembering an old saying he had heard once. "'_If you want to get rid of something, you must first allow it to flourish._' Maybe he was trying to solve the problem by magnifying it."

"Well, it didn't work," she said bitterly. She lay back across the bed, then curled onto her side, facing away from him. "I'm going to lie down for a while. I need some time to think things over."

He recognized when she wanted to be left alone, and he walked back to his maintenance unit to get some rest himself. Since they left Fifth Jerusalem, he had been recovering from the damage he had sustained in the escape; he had slept for nearly an entire day after they arrived, but his maintenance results were still showing slightly below normal output. When he had begun to feel better and was awake more frequently, he spent most of his time in their room, reading through the report from Doctus, unless Juli required his presence elsewhere. He had been reading it earlier that evening, and had only switched to the news a few minutes before Juli arrived, to distract himself from the memories it stirred in his mind. He had a few questions he wanted to ask Doctus, but he hadn't heard from her since the night she sent him the file. Although Scientia had made arrangements for their stay on the _Dämmerung_, Doctus herself had remained off the radar, unreachable at her usual AMN address, and Ziggy had begun to worry about her.

At the moment, though, he was more concerned for Juli. She had hit the ground running when they left her office, and her momentum hadn't slowed yet. It had taken him a while to realize that this was how she dealt with her grief, as he dealt with his own by shutting down, closing off, denying its existence at the source; hers, too, was a kind of denial, but channeled in the opposite direction, into restless activity, anything to distract her from the turmoil below the surface.

Sometimes it caught up with her, and when it did, usually after she returned to their room on nights like this one, she collapsed across the bed and lay there weeping into the mattress--not even crying, as if she had no strength left to give voice to her pain and had to wring it from her lungs in whimpers she thought he couldn't hear--until he came over and sat on the floor and held her hand, and felt helpless again. He could take bullets for her, he could shield her from explosions, but he couldn't protect her from her own suffering, any more than he could protect himself.

Other times, when he was asleep, or half-asleep, running diagnostic scans from his maintenance box, Juli curled into the chair with him, although it must have been uncomfortable for her, and he woke up to find her sleeping there.

"Third Division contacted me this afternoon," she said later that night, after they had both been resting for a few hours.

Roused from his trance, he cleared the maintenance data out of his field of vision and looked down. She had her head against his shoulder, and he had his arms around her; until she spoke, he had thought she was asleep.

"They've finished her repairs," Juli went on, without opening her eyes, "and I gave them permission to go ahead and start her up tomorrow. I'll be sitting in on the operation if you'd like to come along."

He nodded, forgetting that she couldn't see the gesture. "I'll go with you." He had visited MOMO only once since they'd arrived here, and only for a short while; it was too painful to sit with her in the overlit white room, to hold the too-small hand and feel nothing in return, no recognition, no response. If Vector succeeded in repairing the damage her adult body had sustained in the dive, they might be able to bring back her consciousness, but there was no guarantee it would be successful, if they hadn't been able to revive her in her original form. Ziggy had only begun to admit to himself that he might have some idea of where her consciousness was, and of what had happened to her when she disappeared into the network, but the thought was still too terrible for him to comprehend or put into words.

"Jan." Juli shifted her weight against him. She seemed smaller and more fragile than he remembered, curled up into herself like a child. "Do you blame me? For what happened to her."

At first he didn't understand what she meant; he had been so concerned with his own responsibility for the incident that the thought of blaming Juli hadn't even occurred to him.

"If I hadn't disconnected her," said Juli, "then ... maybe she would've ...."

"Do you blame me for losing her?"

She pulled away and looked up at him, startled. "No, why would I--"

"Then you shouldn't blame yourself either."

She lowered her head to his shoulder again and sighed, and after that she seemed to breathe more easily.

The next morning, a Vector-uniformed woman met them in the Third Division waiting room and ushered them down the hallway into a smaller, private waiting room outside the lab. "I'll have to ask you to wait here," said the Vector employee. "For security reasons, only authorized Vector personnel are allowed on the operating floor during the transfer process. We'll notify you at once if there are any problems."

"Understood," said Juli. The employee went ahead into the lab, and Ziggy followed Juli to a bench along the wall and sat down after her. The room was as bright and sterile as the examining room where he had last seen MOMO, and nearly as empty, except for the benches and a small table with a synthetic plant and some holographic information panels. A larger screen in the corner, tuned to a government news channel, played broadcasts from the war in the outer regions, the only subject that had taken precedence over Juli's disappearance for the last few days. Ziggy had already lived through more conflicts than he could recall, had participated in almost as many, and he no longer found it strange how quickly the presence of war became commonplace. After a while, all the footage from all the battlefields in the star cluster began to look the same, all the statistics on human loss and suffering faded into background noise, and there was no way to comprehend it except by tuning it out. People lived surrounded by reminders of death--it clamored at them from every screen and surface, invisible in its omnipresence--and they had no choice but to ignore it.

Instead of watching the news, Ziggy stared at the blank wall in front of him, dimming his optical sensors to block out the stinging light. He didn't look at Juli sitting beside him, but after a few minutes he felt her hand rest on his own.

They both looked up when the door to the lab swished open and the Vector employee stepped out. "There's been an error in the activation sequence," she said before they could ask what was wrong. "You may want to come inside now, in case ...."

She didn't have to finish. _In case this is your last chance to see her._

Juli stood first, and Ziggy felt the absence of her hand more sharply than he had noticed its presence. "What's the problem?" she said.

"We're not sure." The employee cast a worried glance back through the doorway, into the noise and commotion of the lab. "We completed the transfer of her operating system, but we still can't get a response. It's as if her consciousness is refusing to awaken inside her body."

Ziggy was on his feet before he was aware of standing up. "Can you prepare a dive unit with the shadow network protocol? I may be able to determine what's causing the error."

Juli grabbed his arm. "What are you doing? You can't--"

"She's in danger, Juli." He turned toward her. "You said you would do anything to help her, right?"

"Yes, but--"

"So would I." Pulling his arm away, he nodded to the Vector employee and followed her through the door.


	23. 23

**23**

The lab had a similar configuration to the ones on Second Miltia and in the AMN Bureau on Fifth Jerusalem, with a control room overlooking the operating floor, but the Third Division lab was twice the size of the others and incorporated newer technology; it even looked newer, every surface scoured in the same too-brilliant light. The operating floor itself consisted of three separate platforms, arranged in a triangular formation and linked by walkways. Two of the platforms were in use, haloed by identical rings of light. Suspended above each of them was MOMO--there were two of her now, the little girl she had been and the adult she hadn't quite yet become. It was the first time Ziggy had seen both versions of her at once, and the sight left him unsettled for reasons he couldn't explain.

"Sir, the dive preparations are complete," said the Vector employee behind him. Pulling his gaze from the monitors, he walked to the dive unit and lowered the visor over his eyes.

The world blurred and dropped away into darkness, a shifting, swirling mass of shadows that never completely resolved; half-formed structures surfaced out of the haze, wavered, and subsided, and he stumbled over them blindly, searching for something he couldn't see or feel and might not recognize even if he did. Here and there he glimpsed flashes of purple flame darting among the shadows, like heat lightning between clouds, and sometimes the shadows themselves approached substance for a moment, mocking him with forms and faces he could almost convince himself he hadn't merely imagined.

"Erich!" he roared, and the darkness scorched his throat like smoke, burning away his voice. "I know you're here. If you have her, let her go!"

The howling in his ears took on the sound of laughter. "Very well, Jan Sauer. But are you certain she wants to come back?"

The ground--if there was anything so definite here--shifted suddenly beneath him, the dark haze parting like a curtain as he staggered forward. Now he could see his surroundings clearly, rows of transparent capsules arrayed from here to infinity. He approached the nearest and peered through the glassy membrane at the object inside: a translucent body curled into itself like a fist, its head and limbs barely formed, its eyes blind dark spots.

Warm white light radiated from the column. When he reached out with his right hand and brushed against his surface, images flashed through his mind and he pulled back with a shudder, repulsed by the momentary glimpse of someone else's paradise. Now he remembered what this place was. Each of these cells--and there must be thousands, perhaps millions by now--contained a world constructed solely to fulfill the desires of a single inhabitant. This was the reward the Executor had promised his followers, the same lie Voyager had used to mislead the People of Zohar on Abraxas one hundred years ago. And that meant they might still be here--but he wasn't here for them, not now. He didn't even know if he'd be able to find them, and besides--

He took a deep breath. _I have to focus._ He was here for one reason; he had come to find MOMO. Bracing himself, he turned away from the column he had been examining. "What have you done with her, Erich?" he called without expecting an answer. "Where is she?"

More laughter, echoing down the rows. "But if I told you, that would make it too easy. I'm sure you'll be able find her. Take all the time you need. And try not to lose your temper; you know you can't concentrate when you're upset."

"I'm perfectly calm," he said, clenching his teeth against the lie. Already his composure was slipping, and he didn't know how much longer he could stay here, how much longer he could remain in control.

He started down the aisle, but a sudden impulse made him change direction, and he veered off between the rows. His sensors weren't functioning here, and he couldn't detect her signature. He wouldn't be able to find her by searching methodically, from one row to the next; if he tried, he might be here forever. Logic and strategy were of no use to him now, and he didn't trust his own intuition enough to let it guide him.

By now he had turned at random several times, and no longer knew which way he had come from or where he was going; he was out of breath, his internal systems flagging as his age caught up with him, and despite the calm he maintained on the surface he wanted to scream in frustration, destroy everything in sight until he found what he was looking for, but that wouldn't bring MOMO back either. Struggling for breath, he crashed to his knees.

_I can't do this._ He ached inside, a tree of pain rooted in his chest and branching up into his throat, and his face felt damp--with tears or perspiration, he couldn't tell. _I can't do it alone. MOMO, I need you to help me. I need you to tell me where you are._

"Giving up already, Sauer? I thought you were more stubborn than that. There was a time when you would have shot yourself in the head rather than admit defeat--but maybe your courage died with you on that day."

Something detonated in his mind, a buried pocket of rage, and he uttered a wordless cry and hauled himself upright, battling his own weakness as he swung around in search of the voice. Forgetting MOMO, he thought only of finding Voyager and making him answer for his crimes; but the laughter seemed to issue from everywhere at once, and he didn't know which way to turn, or where to ground the anger and loathing that surged through him like an electric charge, shorting out his senses and any reason he had left.

Then he saw it, through the screen of rage over his eyes, the blue-green glow of a single column in the midst of the white--and he knew, without requiring verification from his useless sensors, without having to calculate the odds. He staggered toward it, cutting across aisles on a diagonal now, slowing when he brushed too near a cell and intruded on the dreams of the consciousness trapped inside it. They ran the range of human desires, and many of them made him recoil in disgust, but a few enticed him enough to distract him for a moment, and he had to tear himself away with as much force as when he pulled back instinctively from the others. He had to remind himself that there was nothing here he wanted, nothing that Voyager could give to him--except MOMO.

He stood before her now, in the aquamarine glow that surrounded her. She had never been an infant, but a child's body drifted inside the column, not yet alive and not yet fully human. He could reach out and touch the glass from where he stood, but some instinct told him not to, and he kept his arms at his sides. He didn't want to know what she was dreaming.

"Why do you hesitate?" said the voice behind him, and he would have spun in its direction if he hadn't already known, somehow, that he would find no one there. "There's nothing to be afraid of--not if you're certain she loves you more than the world I've offered her. And you are certain of that, arent you?" The low mocking rasp of a laugh. "Go ahead and reach out to her, then. What do you have left to lose?"

_Everything,_ he thought, and for the first time in a hundred years he realized it was true. Perhaps that was why Voyager hadn't sought him out at once after he died, not until three years ago, after Ziggy had met MOMO and Juli and the others. Until then, Ziggurat 8 hadn't had anything worth bargaining for--no loved ones to threaten, no desires to manipulate, no inclination at all but the wish to annihilate himself; and Voyager, for all the power he had, seemed unwilling or unable to grant him that. Until three years ago Jan Sauer had been a dead man, and dead men had nothing left to sacrifice.

He held out his right hand and stared at it in the watery greenish light. After a moment, he took off his glove. His fingers trembled as he pressed them to the glass.

* * *

He stood in a clearing at dusk, pink and yellow flowers blurring into a soft haze along the ground, fireflies drifting among them in a dance too complex to reduce to a known equation. Among the deep reds and purples of the sky above, stars glittered in the same inscrutable pattern. At the edge of the clearing he recognized the pastel trees from the environment MOMO had programmed to test the battle simulator.

Nearer at hand was a ship that resembled the _Elsa_, at rest in a bed of flowers. Outside the ship, by the airlock, a piano stood as if it had sprung from the earth along with the trees and flowers and grass, and as he approached he saw MOMO seated in front of it--the child-MOMO, her tiny hands poised above the keys, playing but making no sound. She didn't glance up from the display panel when he came closer.

"MOMO," he said, knowing she wouldn't respond, that perhaps she couldn't hear him at all.

A footfall in the grass behind him, a displacement of the air accompanied by a barely perceptible drop in temperature. "Call to her again, Jan Sauer. Maybe she'll answer this time."

He whipped around. Voyager stood in the meadow like a living silhouette, like a rent in the world opening into some infinitely dark place beyond. The evening sky turned bruised and menacing behind him; even the stars took on the infernal gleam of pinholes opened into a furnace, and the fireflies reddened above the darkening sward. Ziggy stepped back into a defensive posture. "Let her go," he said, and no anger rose in his throat to choke off his words; he really did feel calm now.

"Whether she stays or leaves here is not up to you to decide." A smile crept out to the corners of his mouth. "This is the world she desires--the world she created for herself. All I did was reach into her heart and make it real to her."

"Real?" Ziggy cast his gaze around the clearing, at the pink and blue and lavender trees, the sleeping bulk of the _Elsa_, the fireflies making garlands of light among the flowers, and he shook his head. Just because he could perceive it with his senses didn't make it real. "You gave her an illusion. You deceived her, just as you deceived my wife and child."

"I only gave them what they wanted," said Voyager. "And I did the same for her. Everything she could ask for is here--everything, that is, except you." When Ziggy stared at him in astonishment, Voyager's smile cut in deeper, twisting like a barbed hook. "That's right. Her new world doesn't include you. She doesn't need you--in fact, she's perfectly content without realizing you ever existed. And why tear her away from her new-found happiness? If you try to release her now, you'll only make her suffer. Here she'll be safe forever, shielded from anything that could harm her. She finally has the protection you could never provide for her. Doesn't that put your mind at ease?"

Ziggy glared at Voyager over his raised fists. It took all his resistance not to look back at MOMO; if he did, he might have to admit Voyager was right about her happiness. Ziggy couldn't keep her safe. He couldn't even guarantee her peace of mind; he could only tell her the truth.

_But maybe the truth is enough._

He straightened, lowering his arms and letting his fists uncurl at his sides. "You left her alive," he said. "You didn't kill her, like ... the others."

"Her consciousness is tethered to your world by a single thread. If you try to wake her against her will, that thread will be severed."

Ziggy raised his head and stared into the dark red eyes. "What is this about, Erich? This game you're playing? I want the truth."

He laughed again. Behind him the last of the color drained from the night, leaving only an afterglow around the edges of the darkness. "And what makes you think I can tell you that? You already know it yourself."

"That's not what I'm asking. I want to know why you've been following me, and why you wouldn't leave me in peace even after I was dead. I want to know why you're still threatening me if I'm worthless to you." He dropped his gaze. "If you're really what you say you are, then you're practically a god. I can't possibly have anything you need to achieve your objectives. So what's the reason for this? Are you doing it for your own enjoyment? Why?"

Voyager moved closer and the darkness followed at his heels, bleeding light and color out of the world, until he stood eye to eye with Ziggy, a few inches away from his face. "Do you want to find out?" he said, on the edge of a whisper. "I'll make you a trade. Your soul in exchange for hers."

Ziggy said nothing. He had been expecting this. He took a deep breath. "You'll let her go?"

"There's one way to find out."

"Ziggy, no! Don't listen to him!"

At the sound of her voice they both looked back toward the place where they had left her. MOMO stood, overturning the piano bench in her haste, and as she ran toward them her outline blurred, so that Ziggy couldn't tell whether she was young or grown, a child or a woman. At his side he heard a hiss of indrawn breath, felt a spike in the air, and he realized MOMO had caught Voyager off guard.

She flickered into her adult form and remained stable, her ether bow materializing in her hands. Ziggy sidestepped instinctively as the arrows flew past him. Taking his place beside MOMO, he saw the last of the arrows strike the invisible barrier around Voyager, where they disappeared in a flash of purple-black light and left him unscathed.

MOMO stepped out in front of Ziggy. "Leave us alone, Voyager!" She aimed her bow again, without firing. "You can't get away with this anymore. You could never give me what I really wanted."

"And what makes you say that? You seemed happy enough with what you had."

"But it wasn't what I wanted." MOMO shook her head fiercely, still aiming her bow. "Because--I didn't even know what that was, until now, until I realized what I don't want. I think I'm finally starting to grow up, and that's--I think that's what I want after all."

"MOMO ...." Ziggy stared at her, but he didn't move or reach out to her.

She took another step forward. "I want to grow up," she said, loosing each word like an arrow, "and I want to watch my children grow up, and I want to see their children grow up too. That's what my father would have wanted for me. That's why he died, so he could make a world where everyone who hadn't been born yet could live in peace. He sacrificed his life to give his dream to me. And I--I want to carry out that dream, so I can make him proud. So I can make Mommy proud, and--" She turned, looked over her shoulder for a moment. "And you, Ziggy."

"I'm already proud of you."

MOMO shook her head again. "I know. But I want you to be happy."

Before he could answer, she drew back her bowstring and released another volley of arrows. Voyager's silhouette flickered behind a shell of bright explosions, but the darkness that had erased the world behind him kept advancing, surging past him now, into the clearing. Ziggy launched a round from his own weapon--it wouldn't stop Voyager for long, but maybe it would buy them enough time to escape. He fled after MOMO across the field, toward the margin of trees at the far end. Shadows like black smoke boiled across the sky in their pursuit.

"I've got her!" he called as they ran, hoping someone could still hear his transmission outside the network. "Hurry up and log us out of here!"

The tree line ahead of him blurred. Silvery mercury drops scattered across his vision and the ground bucked between his strides, pitching him forward before he caught his balance. He raced to keep up with MOMO, but exhaustion seized the workings of his inner machinery and he knew he was losing ground. He had overestimated himself again.

"Faster, Ziggy!" MOMO looked back at him and thrust out her arm. "Grab my hand!"

He pushed himself for a final sprint as they neared the edge of the clearing, and as his fingers touched hers the world turned to glass and shattered, and he broke through into a confusion of light and noise.

His surroundings hadn't yet snapped into focus when he staggered up from the dive unit, pulling off the headset as he stood. A few technicians started from their workstations to caution him against getting up too soon, but they stopped before they reached him, perhaps realizing their efforts would be about as effective as leaping into traffic in the path of a speeding truck.

Beyond the glass partition separating the control room from the operating floor, the blue glow faded and MOMO--the older MOMO--folded to her knees in slow motion, as if lowered to the floor by invisible hands.

He reached her first, and helped her to her feet as Juli arrived. Juli stopped at the edge of the platform, but MOMO pulled away from Ziggy and ran toward her, throwing her arms around Juli with such force that for a moment Ziggy worried they would both lose their balance. When MOMO let go, Juli stepped back to catch her breath, her face pale and drawn in the stark light. "MOMO," she whispered, still half in disbelief. "Are you-- How did you-- What _happened_?"

MOMO shook her head. "It's--I don't know if I can explain now." She looked around at the vast white chamber, the suspended platforms, the control room at the far end. "Are we on the _Dämmerung_? This looks like where I had my operation."

"It is," said Juli. "After the incident last week, we had to bring you back to Third Division for repairs."

MOMO's eyes widened. "Last week? It's only been a week? But I thought--" Shaking her head again, she stared at the control-room window. "I guess I lost track of time. Ziggy, are you okay?"

He ran a quick self-scan of his internal systems now that his sensors were functioning again, and winced at the readouts. Clots of black and silver still drifted before his eyes; he ached wherever he could still feel pain, and his coordination lagged. "I'll be all right."

Juli cast him a significant look, the one that said she didn't believe his reassurance. He'd been getting that a lot from her lately. "I think we could all use some rest," she said, and her tone followed her gaze; it was the way she proposed suggestions when she intended for them to be interpreted as commands, a manner of speaking she had probably honed during countless meetings of the SOCE and Parliament. "Let's head back to the residential sector for now. That way, MOMO, you can get filled in on everything that's happened in the past few days. I'm afraid there've been ... a number of significant developments in our investigation."

"Significant developments?" MOMO stared at Juli, reading the concern on her face; then she turned to Ziggy, but not for reassurance, not if she could read him as well as he thought she could. "Did something bad happen?"

He nodded, tight-lipped.

"I'll explain when we get back to our room," said Juli, looking out across the walkway as a few Vector employees hurried toward the platform. While Juli conferred with them, MOMO wandered over to the adjacent platform where her former body hovered in stasis, the blank doll-eyes closed and the head tipped back, the limbs rigid and still.

MOMO didn't turn around when Ziggy approached behind her. "She looks kind of sad, don't you think?" she said after a while. "Like she knows she's going to sleep and won't wake up anymore. I wonder if KOS-MOS ever felt like that."

He kept silent, because he didn't know what to say.

When she pulled her gaze away from the body and looked up at him, her eyes were liquid, and they spilled over when she tried to smile. "I miss her," she said, and he wasn't sure, at first, whether she meant KOS-MOS or herself. "I miss everyone so much. Do you think, when all this is over, we'll get to see them again?"

"I'm not sure." He put his arm around her shoulders. "But I hope so. I miss them too."

She looked startled at the admission; he guessed it was unusual for him to express his feelings so candidly. "After we're done reuniting the Federation," said MOMO, "when it's safe to reopen the sealed column, then we'll try to find them, right?"

That had been part of the original proposal for the AMN project, he remembered. But after they had made the gate-jump to Second Miltia and sealed off the entrance to the other galaxy, after the government got involved, the objective of reestablishing contact with the Lost Jerusalem expedition had been buried under the more pressing goal of rebuilding political and social infrastructure within the Federation. At the time, MOMO had protested: Why should one be more important than the other? Wasn't that why they were building the AMN in the first place? But maybe it had been an unexpected blessing; as long as the Federation couldn't reach Lost Jerusalem, maybe Ormus and Voyager couldn't either.

"I had a dream that they came back." She was staring into the blue sphere again, as if addressing her other self inside it. "Jr. and the others, I mean, and everything was just like it was, and .... But it wasn't real. It wasn't the same. It can never be the same again, can it?"

"It might be different," he said. "Maybe it will be better."

"A better world." She held out her hands, spanning the diameter of the blue shell. The sphere glowed like the surface of a miniature planet circled by rings of light. "That's what we're building, right? And we'll be here to see it."

He nodded. Even if he didn't live to see it completed, at least he had watched it begin.


	24. 24

**24**

Although she had been here for her operation only a few weeks ago, it seemed much longer than that; she had lost her perception of time when she was trapped in the shadow network, and she recalled only vague and fleeting memories of her imprisonment there. The dreams blurred into each other and into a haze of pleasant feelings that she couldn't help recalling with fondness even now, even though she knew better. That world might have been an illusion, but knowing as much didn't prevent a part of her from wanting to return there.

She didn't tell her mother and Ziggy about it. She didn't want them to worry about her, and she hoped they wouldn't ask too many questions. Mostly, though, she was afraid of what she had begun to understand while she was imprisoned in Voyager's mind--that beneath the twisted motives and unspeakable means, his goals were similar to her own. Similar, not identical--but it frightened her that she could relate to them at all. He hadn't been lying, for instance, when he told Ziggy he wanted to save the world from its own destruction; that much was genuine, she could tell. She had sensed real fear inside his mind when she was trapped there, and she realized he was trying to build a better world too. But his plan for rebuilding the world involved turning it into a prison that didn't look like a prison from the inside, and installing himself as its god, and killing or harming millions of people in the process, and she couldn't understand that at all.

But still, were MOMO and the others who had contributed to the AMN Project really any better, any more justified than he was? Weren't they also playing at being gods, meddling in things they didn't fully comprehend? Doctus said the shadow network had evolved symbiotically with the AMN, and Voyager said he had used the AMN to restore his consciousness; did that mean it was partly MOMO's fault that he had been able to extend his influence so far across the imaginary domain? If they hadn't built the AMN, his existence might have remained fragmented, incapable of causing any harm. But then the Federation would still be fragmented too.

Until now she had always seen the AMN Project in terms of necessity; they needed a new network to replace the UMN, so they built one. It seemed straightforward enough, and she had never harbored any serious misgivings about the project before. Her mother, though, had expressed doubts from the beginning, and until now MOMO hadn't understood why. Juli never questioned the need to restore communications and transfer services to their former capacity, but she had been skeptical of Scientia's plan, and in the early meetings of the Development Committee had demanded all the information they could provide before she would agree to it. Her arguments with Doctus had achieved legendary status within the Committee for bringing many of those early meetings to a standstill. Usually it was Ziggy who intervened; he didn't have much knowledge of network engineering, but his presence on the Committee had been invaluable if only because he knew how to defuse a tense situation with minimal collateral damage.

Even now, MOMO got the impression Juli didn't trust Scientia--or Doctus, who seemed to personify everything Juli disliked about the organization. The two of them had never got along, even though they managed to cooperate now, in the name of civility and progress. MOMO sensed that her mother was jealous of Doctus, even if Juli didn't admit it to herself, but how could that be? Did it have something to do with Doctus' referring to Ziggy as an old friend? She had called him "Captain," just as Canaan had done two years ago. Was Doctus hiding something too?

MOMO decided to ask Juli about it--not about Doctus, but about her misgivings with the AMN Project--and approached the subject, with caution, after Juli finished explaining what had happened in her absence.

"The AMN proposal?" She seemed surprised that MOMO had asked. They were sitting together in the main living area of their quarters on the _Dämmerung_, Juli in a chair facing away from the AMN console in one corner of the room, and MOMO perched cross-legged on one of the two beds, hugging a pillow to her chest. In her bed at home she still kept the Bunnie doll Jr. had given her a few years ago, and she wished she had it now, because she missed Jr. and the others more than ever since she had returned from the shadow network. "Well, where would you like me to start?" said Juli. "What do you know about it already?"

MOMO tried to recall what she had heard during the planning sessions with the Development Committee. Two years into the project, she still wasn't sure she understood all the concepts, at least not the abstract theoretical ones that seemed to have no direct bearing on her knowledge of the network architecture itself. She cast a nervous glance across the room, wondering if Ziggy had fallen asleep in his chair or if he had just been silent for a while; even with her observational circuits, sometimes it was hard to tell. But he lay still with his eyes closed, Alby curled on the platform by his feet, and even if he was awake, MOMO didn't mind him overhearing their conversation. And if _he_ minded, he would tune it out.

"I only really know about the first phase of the project, the one we're working on now." She turned toward Juli again, shifting her pose on the bed and drawing her knees up toward her chest, so that she could rest her head on the pillow. "The AMN superstructure is supposed to link the two domains, but they're not fully integrated yet, right? They're still like two systems working mostly independently. The axis is what connects them--that's how they talk to each other, share information. But the second phase, the ...." She paused, searching her database for the term. "... 'Individuation process,' I think?"

Juli nodded. "That's what they called it in the proposal."

"Right. Well, I know that's where the part of the network that exists in the real domain starts linking directly to the imaginary domain, and that's supposed to change it somehow, but ... I ... I don't really know how it works." She bit her lip and looked away, embarrassment flooding over her. How could she have contributed to the project for the last two years without knowing what its final goals were? She had written most of the code for the operating system and still didn't understand how it worked, except on the most concrete and rudimentary level.

"No one seems to know exactly what will happen when that stage begins," said Juli, "or when it will start. Theoretically, it's not supposed to happen until the infrastructure has been restored to the complexity of the former UMN. But once the necessary connections are in place ...." She turned in her chair, leaning her arm against the desktop, and her gaze settled on the idle screen behind her, the entwined double serpents of the AMN logo staring back with their startled-looking dot-eyes. They faced each other at the pinch in the middle of the infinity symbol, on opposite sides of a segment bearing the initials "AMN" like a banner; MOMO remembered someone, maybe Doctus, telling her the middle segment was supposed to represent the axis. The serpents' tails looped around and met somewhere behind the axis-banner, but MOMO had always thought it looked like they were connected, like a snake with one body and two heads. It bothered her the more she thought about it, so she tried not to.

She bunched the pillow closer with a shiver. Everything seemed more complicated now, as if the world had taken on several new dimensions of space while she was gone, and she had to reorient herself in too many directions at once. She wanted everything to go back to normal, but what was normal anymore? Voyager had taken over the imaginary domain, the Federation was at war again with Ormus, her own mother was a fugitive and a criminal, and they might never return home at this rate, if they even had a home to return to. MOMO herself had changed too, she realized, and even if she did have a chance to go back to the way things were, she wouldn't be the same, so nothing else would be either. She had already found that out when she was trapped in Voyager's mind.

Lifting her head from the pillow, she caught sight of herself in the wall-length mirror across from the beds and realized she was sitting hunched over again, as if she was still trying to shrink back down to her former size. She was going to have to get used to her new appearance all over again; her personality layer had begun to regress to her previous self-image when they had tried to revive her in her original body, and the transition was almost as jarring as the first time.

"Mommy, there's something else I want to talk to you about," she heard herself say in a rush, although she hadn't planned on saying anything about it at all.

Juli blinked as if coming out of a trance, and looked away from the screen. "What is it?"

"Well, um ...." She pushed away the pillow and sat up straighter, studying her own movements in the mirror. Sometimes it still felt as though she was watching someone else. "I think there was a problem with my operation. The first time, I mean. I know I didn't tell you about it, but I kept having these errors."

"Errors?" Her mother leaned forward slightly in her chair. Watching her now, MOMO realized how poised she always seemed, as if she practiced every gesture until she had acquired a fluency and eloquence in body language. Even at home, sitting at the kitchen table or on the couch, she always looked as if she was about to stand up and give a speech in front of the Subcommittee; she had that kind of presence, and MOMO envied her. "What kind of errors?" said Juli. "The Third Division staff said you might have trouble adjusting, so unless it's something very serious, I don't think there's much cause for concern."

MOMO shook her head, fighting the urge to crawl back into herself. "It wasn't just that. I mean, that was part of it, and there were times when I felt like I was out of myself for a minute, like they said I would, but that wasn't the only problem." She took a deep breath. "I thought .... I had terrible thoughts. Like maybe I didn't want to be grown up after all, or I wasn't supposed to grow up. It was just that there was so much responsibility, and everything changed so fast, and--"

"Oh, MOMO." Juli sighed, and for a second MOMO worried she was about to get angry. "Why didn't you tell me this before?"

MOMO stared down at the folds of her skirt across her lap. "I didn't want to bother you. I mean, you always seemed so busy with your work, and ...."

"You were afraid that if you told me, I might think the operation had been a failure."

She looked up again in astonishment. "How did you know?"

"MOMO, listen." Juli got up from the chair--she even managed to do that gracefully--crossed the room in a few strides, and sat down on the bed next to her, taking one of MOMO's hands in her own. Their hands were almost the same size now; Juli's always felt slightly cold, but MOMO found something comforting about her touch anyway. "Your creation was the sum of your father's research. You're a very advanced Realian, almost identical to an ordinary human girl. But other people, ordinary humans ... they get to grow up a little at a time, instead of all at once. It happens so gradually they don't even realize it. Their cells are constantly dividing and being replaced. They get a new body every seven years, and they don't even have to go in for an upgrade. That's part of what transgenic technology is designed to address in Realians. But until your operation, you had the same form all your life. You were born that way."

"I know." MOMO thought of the body she had left behind in the lab that morning. The first time, she had still entertained the thought that she could go back to being a child if there were any complications. Now she knew that wasn't possible, and she could never get any younger, but it only seemed fair; after all, humans didn't have that option either.

"It's nothing to be ashamed of. Growing up is difficult even when it happens gradually. It was hard for me, but I think I grew up too soon--you know, I was just a little older than you when I married your father." She stared into the middle distance, her thoughts lost amid the abstract pattern in the carpet, and MOMO wondered what Juli had been like at her age. MOMO couldn't imagine getting married or having a child yet--but then, she had other responsibilities. "In some ways, you're a lot more mature than I was," said Juli, as if picking up a trace of her thoughts. "But you had to grow up very suddenly--physically, I mean--and since your mind is so much like a human's, I wouldn't be surprised if you had trouble adjusting to the change." She laughed, a nervous flutter in her throat. "Maybe you're even more like me than I thought."

_I wish I were more like you,_ thought MOMO, but she didn't say it out loud. She stared at her mother's sharp features and wondered if any of that was reflected in her own design, if she would resemble Juli when she got older.

They sat together in silence for a few minutes, and then MOMO's sensors registered activity across the room and she heard Ziggy get up. He walked around to the side of the bed where they were sitting, and Alby trotted after him, with a slight limp she hadn't noticed before; Juli said Alby had been hurt when their apartment was broken into.

"Don't worry, I wasn't listening," said Ziggy. He looked calmer and more rested, and MOMO felt relieved; she had been worried for him after the dive this morning. "I woke up a little while ago, but I didn't hear your conversation. Is everything all right?"

MOMO nodded. "Mommy and I were just having a girl talk."

He smiled, or at least the corners of his mouth straightened more than usual. It had been a long time since MOMO had last seen him smile like that.

On the desk across the room, Juli's connection gear went off. MOMO felt Juli's hands grow tense a moment before she let go. "I'm sorry, I have to get that. Helmer said he'd be calling this afternoon." She stood abruptly and walked over to the desk. "Hel--I'm sorry, Captain Roman?"

Ziggy gave MOMO a meaningful look, and they both spent the next few minutes trying not to listen to the conversation; MOMO couldn't hear Captain Roman's side very well anyway, and Roman seemed to be doing most of the talking.

"... I understand," said Juli, her voice strained as if she were trying not to sound shaken. "Please keep me updated on any further developments in the situation. We'll do what we can." She put away the connection gear and walked back to the bedside, her face as pale and hard as quartz. "That was Captain Roman of the Intelligence Bureau. Her department just confirmed that Ormus is planning to launch an attack on Second Miltia, probably some time within the next twenty-four hours."

This time MOMO jumped up from the bed. "We've got to stop them! What are we going to do?"

Juli and Ziggy made eye contact briefly. "I'm not sure how much we can do," said Juli. "I can't even get in touch with the Subcommittee." Because of the organization's close ties with Juli, the SOCE had been suspended by the government, the other six executive members detained pending further investigation.

"That does complicate the situation," said Ziggy. "However, we can still get in touch with Scientia. And we have whatever resources are available to us here on the _Dämmerung_."

MOMO thought for a while. "He's controlling Ormus from the shadow network, isn't he? Voyager, I mean."

"It seems that way," said Juli.

"Then I'd like to meet with the AMN Division right away. We need to figure out a plan." MOMO looked to both of them in turn, with a mixture of urgency and hesitation. "Will you come with me?"

"MOMO--" Juli moved as if to stall her, but MOMO had already started for the door.

"Stay, Alby." Ziggy glared at the dog, then turned and followed MOMO out to the hallway, and Juli stepped out after him.


	25. 25

**25**

In a few hours, MOMO had assembled the current and former members of the AMN Development Committee in one of the _Dämmerung_'s conference rooms, where the first meetings had taken place two years ago. Many of those who had since left the AMN Division attended via holographic transmission; their screens lined the perimeter of the room, overlooking a formation of tables arranged around a platform at one end of the hall.

MOMO stood on the platform to direct the meeting. The larger screens behind her displayed placeholder images for now; when the conference began, she would use them for the diagrams and charts she had prepared. She was accustomed to the arrangement, having given progress reports every week before a similar assembly during the first year of the AMN Project; still, even from across the room Ziggy could tell she was nervous, not from stage fright but from the realization that the stakes this time were much higher than they had been. He and Juli had both tried to reassure her, but it was difficult to provide any comfort when they were at least as worried as she was.

She had just called the meeting to order when the door chimed at the opposite end of the room, and the last member of the Committee to be accounted for strolled in without ceremony, before MOMO or anyone else had a chance to respond.

"Well, it seems I'm fashionably late again," said Doctus. "I see no one bothered to save me a seat. But at least I'm not the only one standing." She nodded to Ziggy, who had taken up his accustomed posting against the wall. He preferred to stand apart from the proceedings because the detached perspective suited his role on the Committee, but mainly because he felt uncomfortable taking up leg room at one of the tables. "Hello, stranger," Doctus said in a lower voice, walking over to stand beside him. "You look surprised."

Ziggy hesitated, waiting for the attention that had accompanied her arrival to die down. Juli's eyes lingered on him a moment longer than anyone else's, but at last she looked away with a dismissive shake of her head, taking a sudden interest in some documents she had open on her connection gear. "I didn't expect to see you again so soon," he said, without looking at Doctus.

She forced a laugh under her breath. "Are you kidding? I've only been waiting a hundred years to bring this guy to justice."

"I see. Then it seems our objectives are the same." He kept staring straight ahead, afraid of what he'd see or give away if he looked in her direction. With those dark lenses she had an advantage, and he no longer trusted himself to keep his emotions from showing on his face.

"Nice of you to finally notice, Captain Obvious. Did they insulate your brain with lead when they brought you back to life?"

"On second thought ... you couldn't possibly be who I thought you were. My subordinates were respectful." Then he relaxed, shaking his head. "I don't know what happened to you, but it's good to have you back."

"Likewise." Settling against the wall, she turned her attention to the stage at the front of the room.

"You've all received a briefing on the situation," said MOMO, after she had called the meeting to order a second time, "so we'll start discussing our strategy right away, unless anyone has questions." When no one spoke up, she continued. "Our first priorities should be to protect Second Miltia and secure the entrance to the sealed column. We don't know how the enemy will try to attack, but we do know they're capable of striking from the real-number domain by manipulating Ormus, and from the imaginary-number domain via the shadow network. So we'll have to be prepared with a defense on both fronts. Now, I understand Scientia has been doing some independent research on the shadow network. Can someone give us a status report?"

"I can give you more than that, my dear." On that cue, Doctus got up and walked across the room. Producing a disk from a pocket inside her coat, she tossed it down on the table closest to the platform. "That's all the information I've been able to gather on Ormus' pet project, the Apocryphos. It wasn't easy to come by, I might add. I had to do some sneaking around inside one of the most heavily guarded corporate nets in the Federation, the Novus Ordo Seclorum Network." She shot a pointed look across the table at Juli, who had already risen from her seat.

"Novus Ordo Seclorum?" Juli braced herself against the table. "You mean Nov-OS is part of this after all?"

"Sure looks that way," said Doctus. "If you'll pardon the tired metaphor, you could say their network is the tip of the iceberg--a very large, very dangerous iceberg, lurking under the waters of the imaginary domain. The NSN shares the same access protocols as the shadow network, and they appear to be part of the same continuous structure. I hacked into the Nov-OS database on the NSN to see if I could dig up any useful information, and this is what I found." She swiped the disk off the table and brandished it as she stepped up to the platform. "MOMO, you mind if I take over for a minute?"

"Go right ahead." MOMO stepped aside--Ziggy thought she seemed a little nervous--and an awkward hush filled the room as Doctus took her place, fiddling with the controls on the projector unit until the blank screens behind her jumped to life in a cascading wall of data.

"As you can see here, Project Apocryphos is the designation for a top-secret plan to build a mobile fortress capable of taking on the superior forces of the Federation military. But that's just part of the story. Really, it's--"

"Wait a minute," said Togashi, pointing at the screen. "I'm sorry to interrupt, but are you saying they could undertake a project of that size without us noticing? Based on those specifications, it looks like something on the scale of the _Merkabah_--and I doubt the Federation could've kept that a secret even if they wanted to."

Doctus flashed a smile that could have indicated approval or reproach for the interruption; with her eyes concealed, it was impossible to tell. "Very good. You're right, they couldn't have kept it a secret if they'd built it all in one place. That's why they employed over three hundred separate production facilities--three hundred and sixty-five, to be exact--scattered among the outer regions. I would assume that they intend to assemble the weapon just prior to launching the attack."

Togashi lowered his arm and sank back into his seat with a grimace. "Then I guess we don't have much of a chance of stopping it before it's assembled."

"No, I should think not. And as I was saying, that's not the only thing we have to worry about. If it were just a conventional military weapon, that would be one thing. But it's much more than that."

"Is this the same Project Apocryphos that Dmitri Yuriev was working on with Voyager in the 4600s?" said Juli. "There wasn't much information in the report you gave us, but I gathered it had something to do with the Zohar and the Relics of God."

"Oh, so you read that." Doctus looked past her toward Ziggy, and he had the fleeting impression of her eyes meeting his, although he couldn't see them behind the lenses. "From what I've been able to piece together since I sent it to you, I'd have to concur. You're aware, I assume, that Joachim Mizrahi's research wasn't the first of its kind? Throughout history, there've been a number of other texts written about the Relics of God; some of them survived in complete or fragmentary form to the present day, but most of them were lost in ancient times. However, as we learned early on in our attempts to reconstruct the UMN, the imaginary domain contains a complete record of the works of humankind from the very beginning of history. None of the information entered into the collective unconscious is ever permanently deleted; it just gets buried for a while, and the deeper it's been suppressed the harder it is to retrieve. A lot of the data stored in the imaginary domain are still beyond the reach of our own technology, but to someone with a strong mental link to the network, it's theoretically possible to retrieve almost any piece of information; it's just a matter of how deep they're willing to dive."

"So you think Yuriev was using Voyager to search the UMN for information on the relics," said Ziggy. He didn't say it loudly, but a few people sitting nearby, including Juli, turned around and glanced in his direction. Because he rarely contributed much to the discourse in meetings like this one, and only spoke up when he had worked out something he felt was important, the rest of the AMN Committee tended to listen when he did speak. "And this ... Apocryphos was the result?"

Doctus nodded. "The name 'Apocryphos' just refers to something hidden or kept secret; it could mean any of the fragments of lost information Voyager discovered when he journeyed across the UMN. It seems he stumbled on the first of these fragments by accident, not long after he hacked into the UMN root structure and encountered U-DO. Somehow, Voyager's activities on the net came to Yuriev's attention, and Yuriev offered to support him if Voyager agreed to search for more information in return. It's quite possible that their partnership not only led to Voyager's interest in manipulating the People of Zohar, but also contributed to some of Yuriev's later research."

"I understand that," he said. "But why is Voyager using that information now? Is he trying to achieve the same goal as Yuriev?" Voyager, too, had expressed his intention to become a god, just as Yuriev had done when he seized the Zohar emulators two years ago. But the emulators had been destroyed, and the original Zohar had vanished with Michtam. Even if Voyager had reconstructed information that enabled him to use the Relics of God, it wouldn't be much use without the relics themselves. "How is he planning to use the Apocryphos if he doesn't have access to the Zohar?"

In front of him, he saw Juli's shoulders stiffen, heard her sharp intake of breath. "Damn it," she whispered. In a louder voice, she said, "That must be what Sellers meant when he said he'd surpassed my husband's research. He's found a way to power that thing without directly linking to the Zohar, or--"

"Or he's managed to build another emulator," said Doctus. "The plans for the Apocryphos fortress include a means of amplifying the energy from its power source, in this case the Zohar emulator--although they could achieve even better results if they got their hands on the real thing. And it's no coincidence that Voyager has been posing as a god to the followers of Ormus. Based on what Ziggurat 8 saw in the Patmos base, it looks like Voyager's trying to use the descendants of the Immigrant Fleet in conjunction with the emulator somehow."

"He's planning to kill them," said Ziggy under his breath, but somehow the people around him still heard. "He'll kill the people of the Immigrant Fleet and absorb their consciousnesses into himself. It's just like--" He shuddered, shook his head. "He's done this before. All of this, it's happened before. But it could be much worse this time. If he's using Second Miltia as well ...."

Juli had turned in her seat again and watched him as he spoke, and now she looked back toward the front of the room. "That's what I was afraid of. The majority of Second Miltia's population still consists of Immigrant Fleet descendants."

"What's he trying to do?" said MOMO, her voice shaking. While Doctus explained her findings, MOMO had stood quietly to one side, but Ziggy had observed her becoming increasingly agitated. "This can't .... How can we stop him?"

Across the room, Miyuki shrugged her shoulders in defeat. "I don't think we can do it alone." She had been staring at the readouts on the screens behind Doctus, studying the specifications for the Apocryphos fortress, and even her stubborn optimism seemed dampened now. "We're going to need the support of the Federation Fleet to stand up to that thing, that ... apocalypse machine or whatever you called it. And they're all busy fighting Ormus."

"I was afraid of that too," said Juli. "I suspected this war was part of their plan, and now I'm sure of it. Has anyone else been following the news? It's been unusually quiet in the outer regions for the last few days. The Fleet is still out there, but they've reported almost no new encounters with the enemy. I'd be surprised if they weren't planning something."

"Well, you know what they say about still water." Doctus stepped back from the center of the stage, leaving the Apocryphos data on the projector. "_Aqua profunda_--oh, forget it," she snapped, when a few people in the audience started to roll their eyes. The other Committee members had been exposed to enough of her quotations in the last few years to qualify for an education in classical Latin. Juli used to joke--and not entirely in good humor--that no meeting of the development team was complete until Doctus had recited something vaguely relevant in a dead language and sent everyone scrambling for a translation program. "Anyway, what about the fleet stationed in Second Miltia?" said Doctus. A division of the Second Miltian fleet had managed to evade deployment to the outer regions because Helmer had successfully convinced the Federation Parliament that it would be inadvisable to leave the sealed column unguarded. "They might have a tough time of it, but they should be able to hold out against this thing for a little while, until we can get some reinforcements sent over. And I'm sure the Federation will change its tune about staying the course in the outer regions once they get a look at the Apocryphos in action."

"That's right, the Second Miltian Fleet is still out there." Juli stared at the screen of her connection gear. "I'll talk to Helmer about it. Maybe he can pressure the military to send reinforcements."

"Can you do that now?" said MOMO, walking back out to the front of the platform where Doctus had been standing. "I mean, after the meeting is adjourned? I think maybe we should split up for now, so we can start working on different parts of the plan. I'd like to meet with all the members of the programming team to discuss how we're going to defend the AMN."

Juli stood ceremoniously and pushed in her chair. "That sounds like a good idea, MOMO. Why don't we reconvene in a few hours; with any luck, I'll have some good news by then."

"All right, then we're officially adjourned." MOMO hopped down from the stage and walked over to the table assigned to the main programming team, a group of Committee members who had worked with her to develop the code for the AMN operating system. While the rest of the Committee broke off into smaller groups, Doctus sauntered back over to the wall where Ziggy was standing.

"So what is it about still water?" he said when she had arrived within earshot.

Doctus shrugged. "It's deep."

"Oh." He had been expecting a more complicated explanation.

"Actually, in Latin it's the other way around. 'Deep water is still.' But it's the same thing, more or less. You could drown if you're not careful." She leaned back against the wall again, crossing one leg over the other nonchalantly, as if she'd just happened to come to rest there. "Anyway, it's nice to see everyone cooperating for once instead of screaming at each other."

"I'll say." He settled back and tried to look as relaxed as she did, but he couldn't calm the fears that had resurfaced, the restless noise in his mind that had always been there, even when it was so quiet he could barely detect it at all. It was the same as two years ago, the same as back then. The world might have changed, but he hadn't. And maybe it was his fate to watch himself make the same mistakes over and over, until once again he had nothing left to defend, and nothing to lose.

But this would be the last time, he realized now. Barring a miracle, regardless of whether he won or lost this battle, he wouldn't live long enough to confront Voyager again. Whatever the outcome, they wouldn't meet again--unless it was in hell, he thought with a bitter trace of irony. If there was a hell, he wouldn't put it beyond Erich to follow him there.

"Doctus?" Miyuki came running over to where they stood, interrupting his thoughts. "Oh, there you are. Listen, I was wondering if you could help me with something I've been working on."

Doctus inclined her head and stared at Miyuki with dispassionate interest. "It's possible. Depends what it is you need help with."

"Oh, um," said Miyuki, "actually, it's just a project I've been working on over in Second Division. It's almost complete, and it might come in handy pretty soon. I just need your advice on sort of a minor detail. I'll show you if you've got a minute."

"Fine with me. It's not like I've got a hot date or anything." She detached herself from the wall and followed Miyuki out of the room, and Ziggy stared after her in disbelief. No wonder he had never recognized her before. He may not have changed at all in a hundred years, but apparently she had. Still, she had sounded different in the message she had sent him a few days ago, more like her old self, so maybe the attitude was part of her persona--another elaborate contrivance, like the body she wore to disguise her real identity.

When Doctus and Miyuki had gone, Juli came up beside him and slipped her arm through his. "Catching up on old times?" she said, a little too pleasantly.

"Sorry, it's--" He looked down at her, then gave up trying to explain. "Don't worry about it."

"I'm not worried. What do I have to worry about?" Her hand found its way to his hand, her fingers meshed with his. She looked across the room, at MOMO and the programming team. "She really has grown up lately, hasn't she?"

"It would appear so." He gripped Juli's hand tighter, holding on while he still had the chance. While he still had time.


	26. 26

**26**

The New Pilgrimage began a few hours later.

Lapis Roman watched their arrival from the bridge of the Special Operations transport ship where she had been posted for the last few days, ever since her request for reassignment had gone through. Ships flashed out of hyperspace across the viewscreen, appearing several at a time in clusters of iridescent flares like a massive display of fireworks. They filled the space around Second Miltia: a patchwork armada of recycled and secondhand vessels, battered Immigrant Fleet ships and discarded Federation spacecraft dating from the Miltia Conflict or before, even a few irregularly shaped objects that looked as if they'd been sawed off an abandoned colony somewhere and outfitted with logical drives. It reminded her of the debris that had turned up when the AMN first began dredging the remote regions of space, all the forgotten and worthless artifacts of a space-faring civilization. Not the kinds of things that were forgotten for a reason, sealed away like Old Miltia or the Relics of God, but things that had slipped by the wayside because they weren't valuable or dangerous enough to retrieve.

Except now they had been assembled into something that _looked_ dangerous, a horde of cast-off and rejected things poised to descend on Second Miltia.

Roman turned toward the nearest observational post, gripping the Realian's shoulder. "Get me on the line with Representative Helmer immediately."

"Yes, ma'am!" The Realian bent over her station, but before she could open a link to Second Miltia, a message burst unannounced from every transmitter at once, flooding every channel simultaneously.

"Behold, citizens of Babylon! We, the Blood of Abraxas and the People of Zohar, the rightful heirs to the promised land, have returned to claim our inheritance. We now request that the sealed column to the galaxy of Lost Jerusalem be reopened within nine hours, or the words of Apocryphos shall be revealed, and Second Miltia will perish by the wrath of God. _For God has put it into their hearts to fulfill his purpose, to be of one mind, and to give their kingdom to the beast, until the words of God are fulfilled._"

Silence, when it returned, was deafening.

"Get me Helmer," said Roman, when she found her voice again. "Now."

* * *

Helmer stood bowed over his desk, gripping the sides of his chair until he caught his breath and his heart stopped pounding at his eardrums. When his desktop signaled an incoming call a moment later, he waited until he had recovered his composure before he answered it.

"Captain Roman."

"Helmer, listen, this is extremely urgent--"

"I know, Lapis." He didn't often address her by her first name, and she looked startled. "I got the message too. I don't think there's a broadcast terminal anywhere in Second Miltian space that didn't receive it just now."

"Have you seen what's out here? The entire Second Miltian fleet is surrounded. There must be hundreds, thousands of them, and they're threatening to destroy us if we don't--"

"I know," he said. "Just hold on, Captain. And let's hope the rest of the fleet doesn't do anything to provoke them."

Roman stared at him in disbelief. "They look sufficiently provoked already, in case you haven't noticed."

He sighed. "I know," he said again. "Try to hold out for now. I'll contact Dr. Mizrahi and get back to you when we've figured out something."

"Yes, sir," said Roman quietly, and closed the transmission.

He turned to the window, staring at the sky as if he expected it to peel away at any second to reveal the bristling shapes of the enemy fleet, like a swarm of mismatched insects. But the sky remained, blue and still, and life on Second Miltia went on beneath it.

* * *

Juli found MOMO and Ziggy in one of the AMWS hangars in Second Division along with Miyuki and Doctus.

"I present to you my latest invention," Miyuki was saying when Juli arrived. She made a sweeping gesture toward the modified AGWS unit, a VX-series model that had gone out of production a few years ago. "So what do you think? I've been working on it for weeks."

"Let me see if I understand correctly," said Ziggy. "You said this unit has its own onboard power source that enables it to be piloted without being connected to a ship's generator?"

"That's right." Miyuki gestured to an AMN workstation with several screens open in the manner of papers strewn haphazardly across a desktop. "I used the Professor's design for the alternate power source on the E.S. _Asher_, but I compressed it to fit on board a standard AGWS. And that's not even the best part. All of the weaponry's based on the Professor's specifications as well. I figured out a way to make it fit a smaller frame without losing a lot of power."

MOMO's gaze shifted from the AGWS to Miyuki, regarding them both with the same combination of awe and reverence. "You mean--"

Miyuki beamed. "This thing might not look like much, but its output is at least on par with the original Erde Kaiser."

"Miyuki, that's amazing!" cried MOMO. "You're a genius."

"_Nullum magnum ingenium sine mixtura dementiae fuit,_" said Doctus, pulling a tight smile.

Miyuki looked perplexed for a moment, as if trying to figure out whether she had just been paid a compliment or dealt an underhanded insult. "Well, I had help from Doctus here. I couldn't have finished it properly without her advice. Since it's not really an anti-Gnosis device anymore, I'm thinking of calling it the Adapted Weapon Experimental System Optimized for Modified Equipment. What do you guys think?"

MOMO was silent for a moment as she worked out the acronym. "You're thinking of calling it 'AWESOME'?"

"Well, yeah--"

"Forgive me if I misunderstood the outcome of our discussion earlier," said Doctus pointedly, "but I was under the impression you had decided to shorten it to AEWS. 'Adapted Erde-Kaiser Weapon System' makes more sense anyway."

Miyuki's shoulders fell. "Oh, all right." She glared at Doctus. "I still think my original idea was better; I can't even _pronounce_ yours. But since I asked for your input--"

"I hate to interrupt you," said Juli, approaching the group, "but I'm afraid I may have some bad news."

Ziggy met her gaze, and the concern in his eyes reflected her own. "What's wrong?"

"I've just received a call from Representative Helmer. We may not have much time left to prepare." She took a deep breath; the others stared at her expectantly. "It seems the post-Ormus alliance has surrounded Second Miltia. They're threatening to destroy the planet if the sealed column isn't opened within nine hours. Currently, they're engaged in a standoff with Second Miltian forces. No shots have been fired yet, but the situation is extremely volatile."

Miyuki gasped. "You mean it's started already?"

"I'm afraid so," said Juli. "Helmer broadcast a distress call and asked the military for reinforcements, but most of the Federation Fleet is still patrolling the outer regions. It'll take hours to mobilize the necessary units at this rate. And by then, it may already be too late to prevent the deployment of Apocryphos."

"But they haven't started fighting yet?" said MOMO. "What are they going to do?"

"I think the more pertinent question is, what are we going to do?" said Doctus. "Since we seem to be the only ones right now who have a chance at stopping this nightmare."

Juli nodded grimly. "You're right. MOMO, what are our present coordinates? How soon can we reach Second Miltia?" She turned to Miyuki and the AEWS. "And will that thing actually work?"

* * *

They crowded the screen now, and more kept appearing even when Roman thought there couldn't possibly be room for them. She wouldn't have believed there were this many Ormus followers left in the star cluster, but the world was a big place even at a fraction of its former size. And with the AMN still incomplete, there was no way of estimating its total population, or of knowing exactly how many people had escaped the disappearance phenomenon two years ago. How many had survived, just as the original people of the Immigrant Fleet had survived the flight from Lost Jerusalem, carrying the faith of the ancients into space?

Her AMN phone trilled in her pocket, interrupting her thoughts. She answered it after the first ring.

"Captain Roman, this is Juli Mizrahi. I've just spoken with Helmer, and we're on our way to Second Miltia now. I'm sending you our destination coordinates. Can you meet us when we gate out?"

Roman glanced up at the screen. Enemy craft surrounded the Fleet formation in every direction, but a smaller ship might be able to get through without rousing an alarm. "My unit may be in a bit of a tight spot at the moment," she said, "but I'll see what I can do. If you can make it here, we can probably short-jump past the blockade and meet you at your target coordinates."

"Just do your best," said Juli. "We're doing all we can."

"I know, ma'am. So are we."

* * *

After she got off the line with Captain Roman, Juli walked back over to the console and studied the reports on the screen. "Sorry about that," she said. "I know you prefer your privacy, but I had to let her know we were on our way."

"Multi-tasking is entirely acceptable under the circumstances." Ziggy leaned forward, bracing himself against the arms of the maintenance unit. He and Juli had returned to their living quarters to make a few last-minute preparations before they reached Second Miltia; MOMO had stayed behind with Doctus and Miyuki in the AMWS workshop. "How are the readings?"

She checked the screen again. "Everything appears to be running fine at the moment. I wish we had time for a more thorough scan, but ...."

"It's all right." The pistons in his legs creaked as he started to get up, but then he hesitated and sat back down. "I wonder if I could ask you a favor while we're here."

"Go ahead."

"Ah ...." He lowered his eyes. "I know this is a lot to ask, so I'll understand if you don't want to do it."

Juli sighed in feigned exasperation. She could always tell when he was about to ask for something he felt was important; the more important it was to him, the more he'd try to downplay it and draw it out before he got to the point. "Honestly, you'd think I was the one who was programmed not to refuse a request. What is it?"

"Actually," he said, "that's exactly what it is."

She stared for a moment, waiting for him to explain, before she realized that was all the explanation he could manage. Of course, she thought, a safety mechanism that stopped him from killing himself or disobeying orders would also prevent him from requesting its removal. She saw the look in his eyes and turned away. "Why?"

"I'm not saying I think it will be necessary," he said. "But if something goes wrong with the mission, I'd prefer to have that option."

She swallowed, running her hand along the controls. "I understand. Sit down." She'd have to do it now, without looking back at him, or she'd lose her nerve. "I hope you know that what I'm doing is extremely illegal. Not that it matters now, of course, but if my record ever gets cleared of the conspiracy charges, I could still get in a lot of trouble for tampering with government property."

"I understand. I'm sorry for asking you to do this."

"It's fine," she said through her teeth, fingers racing over the keys. "Just be quiet and let me concentrate before I change my mind."

It took less time than she had expected. The mechanism proved surprisingly easy to disable; the only difficult part was willing herself to do it. She bypassed the security in a single attempt and entered a command to shut it down. "There you are," she said, straightening as she stepped back from the keyboard. "You're a free man. Just ... you'd better not make me regret this, all right? Does it feel any different?"

"No." He touched the side of his head, fingers brushing past the place where the bullet had entered--where, later, they had repaired him so expertly there wasn't even a scar--as if he expected to notice the difference there first. "And I hope I won't have to find out whether it worked." He let his arm fall to his side. "Thank you."

"Don't mention it." She left the console and walked over to the maintenance box. "You can repay me by coming back safely."

"I plan on it." He made another half-attempt at standing, and stopped when his eyes were level with hers. "Listen, Juli ...."

From across the room, the control panel lit up as a message came in over the intercom. "Are you two almost ready?" said Doctus. "We're approaching our gate-out coordinates. Hurry up and meet us on the bridge."

Juli and Ziggy stared at each other. He leaned closer to her and said quietly, so the intercom wouldn't pick it up, "I just want you to know that if I ... after this is over, I have every intention of spending the rest of my life with you. However long that is. And--"

"Are you still there?" came Doctus' voice over the intercom. "What are you two doing?"

Juli pulled away and stepped down from the maintenance box. "Sorry, Doctus. We'll be right there." She turned back to Ziggy and said in a lower voice, "We can finish this conversation later."

"Right." He stood and followed her to the door.

* * *

The _Dämmerung_ gated out at the edge of Second Miltian space, far outside the range of the patchwork fleet that clustered around the planet like a scatter of debris, but within sight of the Federation flagship and its retinue of smaller craft isolated in the midst of the enemy. There was a brief flare of light as the Special Operations unit under Roman's command gated into hyperspace, and soon afterward a second flash preceded its reappearance alongside the _Dämmerung_. The smaller ship docked inside the colony, and a group of Vector personnel met Roman and her team in the hangar and escorted them to the bridge.

The _Dämmerung_'s bridge was the size of a city block, a multileveled hive of control stations, observation posts, and weaponry modules with a crew of several hundred Vector employees, humans as well as Realians, at work amid a neon proliferation of screens and instrument panels and elaborate virtual interfaces. Roman met with Juli and the others on the main observation deck, beneath a panoramic screen in which Second Miltia drifted small and remote.

She recognized Juli at once from their conversations. In person, Dr. Mizrahi seemed smaller than Roman had expected, and somehow less intimidating. The woman standing beside her would have to be MOMO; she resembled an older version of the standard 100-series units, and there was no mistaking that hair color. The other three were slightly less familiar. Roman had seen the two other women, Miyuki and Doctus, in the news coverage of the AMN Project, but the only man in the group--

_Oh._ The memory hit her like a fist. She nodded toward him in acknowledgment. "You must be MOMO and Dr. Mizrahi's bodyguard," she said. "I'm Captain Roman. I'm afraid I didn't catch your name when I met you a few years ago." She tried to smile. "No hard feelings, by the way."

Recognition crossed his face a moment before he glanced away in what Roman thought was embarrassment, although it was hard to tell; he didn't seem to have much of a repertoire of facial expressions. "Ziggurat 8," he said, and after some confusion she realized he had introduced himself.

"Ah. Right." She stepped back to address the group. "I'd like to thank all of you on behalf of Second Miltia. With your support, we may be able to hold out until reinforcements arrive--assuming they ever do, at this rate."

"Well, we can't promise anything," said Juli, "but we'll try."

Alarms lit up along the observational panels behind them. "Multiple units gating out at coordinates KX919, Y542, Z457!" a Realian at a nearby post called out. "Extremely high levels of AMN transfer activity have been detected in the immediate vicinity. All stations on alert!"

"They're still coming?" Roman peered into the crowded space around Second Miltia, but it was impossible to perceive the individual flashes of gate-jumps at this distance.

"No," said Doctus, and the word was both a confirmation and a denial, punctuated by the click of her high-heeled boots against the deck. "It's something else."

"Switching to close-up view," said a second Realian from across the aisle, and a magnified image of Second Miltia filled the screen. Above the blue-green arc of the planet's horizon, a series of bright flares described an outline on the fabric of space, a skeletal spiral assembling itself out of the void.

"They're being transferred from points all over the star cluster," said the first Realian, hands navigating the control panel with inhuman speed as the screens in front of her cycled through a series of diagrams. "We've recorded one hundred fifty individual transfers in the last five minutes and counting!"

Roman spun to face the others. "Can't we stop them?"

"One hundred sixty-seven!"

"It's too late for that." Juli's eyes never left the screen. "It's already nearly halfway complete."

"One hundred eighty-three!"

"Ziggy," MOMO whispered, edging closer to his side, "is that ...?"

"It's just as we feared." Even his monotone couldn't diminish the hollow echo of dread underneath.

"Two hundred and counting! The transfers are occurring more rapidly! At the estimated rate of acceleration--"

"But it's too soon!" Miyuki's voice sounded strained and frantic. "They weren't supposed to begin the attack for another eight hours!"

"Then we may still have time," said Roman, turning back to the screen. The spiral framework had begun to fill out, walls curving around the supports like the shell of an aquatic life-form, organic and almost Gnosis-like in its morphology. "You said you had obtained information on the fortress's defenses?"

"Two hundred fifty and still accelerating!"

"That's right." Doctus' boot heels clicked again as she strode across the deck. "If we hurry, there's a chance we can get on board that thing and shut it down."

"You have a plan?" said Ziggy.

"Oh, come on." She turned around, one hand poised on her hip. "You think I'd show up without one? I didn't do all that research just so I could brag about it."

"Two seventy-five!"

"Although you certainly did that," Juli murmured under her breath. "Well, then, you'd better hurry up and tell us what it is."

"I was getting to that." Retrieving the disk she had produced earlier at the meeting, Doctus walked over to an available terminal. The others followed, standing around her as she pulled up the data from the file.

"Three hundred fifty!"

Roman glanced back at the main screen in time to see the last fragments of the Apocryphos materialize in the sky over Second Miltia.


	27. 27

**27**

The last time they spoke, the Executor had given Sellers the command to deploy the Apocryphos, and then had told him to stay on board and await further instructions. But if the deployment proceeded as planned, Sellers didn't think he'd be receiving any further instructions, and he certainly had no intention of staying on board any longer than necessary. He recognized a cue to escape when he heard one.

He had arrived here aboard the Apocryphos' main control module, among the last of the components transmitted during the remote-assembly sequence. Unlike the other parts of the fortress, the core module had been developed and built at the Nov-OS complex in Fifth Jerusalem, under Sellers' direct supervision, instead of being outsourced to one of the production facilities scattered among the outer star systems. It housed both the Zohar emulator and the Apocryphos mainframe, and, at the moment, it also housed Sellers--a problem he intended to correct as soon as he had finished running the activation sequence.

The emulator itself wouldn't awaken until the Executor willed it, and by then Sellers planned to be as far out of range as possible. Since the emulator had only a shadow of the limitless energy potential of the Original Zohar, the resulting phenomenon should remain isolated within the Second Miltian region, but it never hurt to take precautions. Sellers trusted his own calculations, but not enough to risk his life on them.

At the main control panel, he watched the start-up checks proceed smoothly as the mainframe linked with the other sectors, confirming that no errors had occurred in the assembly process. The inner and outer defense systems lit up in concentric rings on a screen displaying a map of the fortress in cross section; another screen registered when the weapon sleeping at the base of the central shaft stirred briefly and returned a string of data on its current output levels. That weapon wouldn't be waking up yet either--another reason to get out of here before it did, as if he needed any other incentive.

Once he had finished the activation procedures, the rest would take care of itself. Sellers waited about thirty seconds for further instructions--that way no one could accuse him of disobeying orders--then directed his hover-chair out of the control room and down the corridor, a succession of reinforced doors clanging shut behind him as he breezed past the security checkpoints.

The outer part of the fortress spiraled around the main shaft, so there was no clear demarcation between floors, only a gradual ascent or descent from one sector to the next. Sellers made his way to the hangar in Sector 180, where he had arranged to meet a couple of agents working undercover for the Julian Sect--those self-righteous, self-styled puritans who called themselves the true believers of the faith. The ranks of Ormus were lousy with them, to an extent perhaps even the Executor wasn't aware of; Sellers himself had been astonished by their numbers when he cracked their secret radio code. Officially, the Julians despised Sellers for collaborating with the Executor, but they had proven most cooperative after he offered to preserve their cover in exchange for assistance in his escape.

The two agents he was meeting in 180, Keil and Magni, had stolen information from the Patmos facility and escaped shortly before the remote-linking experiment wiped out the rest of the personnel there. They were posing as guards in one of the escape hangars, but in reality they had been sent to infiltrate Apocryphos in an attempt to shut down the mainframe before anything untoward happened. Sellers had promised to slip them the access codes for the main control room if they agreed to look the other way as he boarded an escape capsule. By the time they found out the codes were useless--a hash of improvised gibberish--Sellers would be on his way to the Atalya system, where he had quietly and anonymously invested his earnings from Nov-OS in an attractive bit of property in a resort city. There he could finally settle down and spend some quality time with the data he had lifted from Juli Mizrahi's files. He had no doubt it would come in useful during the next phase of his research.

Sellers looked forward to it; at last he would have the chance to continue his work with the integrity of an independent researcher, without having to answer to Ormus or anyone else, without political or ideological entanglements to hold back his pursuit of knowledge. At last the world would see that his intentions had been pure all along, that the only master he had ever served was himself, the only creed he had followed that of the scientific method and the laws of the universe. And fortunately for Sellers, the laws of the universe favored those who looked out for themselves.

He was almost beside himself with anticipation by the time he reached Sector 180, although his spirits were dampened a little when he didn't see Keil and Magni right away. That was the trouble with relying on other people to carry out his plans--just as in many of the experiments Sellers had conducted over the course of his career, the only thing he could rely on unconditionally was human error. His heart beat faster: suppose it wasn't human error after all? Perhaps the Julian Sect had set him up. He ventured farther down the passage, and caught his first glimpse of the two agents--sprawled in the midst of a red-black splash across the hangar floor.

He recoiled into the passage, choking, but the sight had etched itself on the backs of his eyelids in acid before he could pull his gaze away.

"Plotting your escape again, Dr. Sellers?"

His heart stalled for a moment before it started up again, faster than before.

"And just where were you planning on going?" The voice came from behind him, deep as still water. "There are only so many safe hiding places in the universe. And you're running out of opposing sides to defect to."

Sellers forced himself to take a deep breath, to slow his racing heartbeat. "I don't intend on taking sides this time, Dmitri." It was a wild guess--he was even less certain now than he had been at the beginning--but if he guessed correctly, he would give the impression of knowing more than the Executor thought he did, and that was a valuable advantage when he had few options left.

Laughter from behind him. Not a good sign. Curiosity got the better of his fear, and swallowing hard, he steered his chair around in the direction of the voice.

If it was Yuriev, he had certainly chosen a bizarre incarnation this time. The man in the passage ahead--his silhouette blocking most of the carnage in the hangar, a minor consolation--wore a shapeless black garment that left only his face exposed. And the Executor's face was terrifying, gray and saturnine like something carved out of the dark side of Lost Jerusalem's moon, the eyes a dull red gleam in the shadows thrown by the light overhead. The smile was the worst, though. Sellers had never seen Yuriev smile like that, and he never wanted to see that expression on anyone's face ever again. Then it occurred to him that he probably wouldn't live long enough to see another human face anyway.

He scowled, tried to keep his voice from shaking. "You're not Dmitri Yuriev."

"But it was a good guess," said the Executor. "In fact, he was a former employer of mine, and my predecessor. I understand you worked closely with him as well, in which case I offer you my condolences. He was a difficult man to work for. At least, he was when I knew him. But that was a very long time ago."

"Who the hell are you?" Sellers clenched his fists against the arms of his hover-chair and fought the urge to turn and race for his life down the passageway.

"That's not important." The Executor moved closer, his strides concealed under the dark cloak. "If I were in your position, I'd have other concerns on my mind right now. Do you remember our conversation about loyalty, Dr. Sellers?"

He didn't answer. The lights in the corridor flared bright for a moment, or maybe his perception had faltered; he was starting to feel dizzy from the shock, and he was afraid he would pass out.

"I must admit, you have some nerve," said the Executor, with mingled contempt and admiration. "You saw how I dealt with traitors, and yet you dared to defy me anyway. I'd call it brave of you if it weren't so pathetic and self-serving." He stood directly above Sellers' chair now and gazed down at him, his mouth wrenched into a sneer. "Hmph. You look frightened. Don't worry, I'm not like Yuriev. When I become God, I'll be merciful and benevolent, like the God of the Messiah. I may even offer my forgiveness to those who repent for their wrongs. And I wouldn't want your loyalty to go unrewarded. I'd like to make you an offer."

Sellers glared into the red eyes; it was getting harder to see clearly, the light growing brighter and sharper in the passage around him and casting the Executor's face deeper into shadow. "Very well," Sellers hissed. He didn't trust the Executor to keep his word, but Sellers clung to the hope that if he made a show of listening, perhaps he could buy enough time to revise his escape plans.

The Executor smiled again--and he really did look benevolent, in a frightening way, as if he knew he was under no obligation to show any mercy. "Here is my proposal, Dr. Sellers. How would you like to continue your research indefinitely under my protection? Safe from the outside world and all those who would interfere with your progress, you could pursue whatever subjects appealed to your interest. Nothing would escape the reach of your brilliant mind, and you'd be hailed throughout history as a savior of humanity--a great man who brought enlightenment to a darkened world. There is a price, of course ... but you're not exactly in any position to bargain, are you?"

Sellers nodded, but he no longer comprehended the words; there seemed to be no point in refusing. The light had erased the walls and floor of the passage and left only the Executor standing before him, a silhouette now, his face veiled in darkness, and then he too was gone and there was only the light.


	28. 28

**28**

As it turned out, Doctus had arrived with only half a plan. She had obtained enough information on the Apocryphos' defenses to have a general idea of how to get past them, but she hadn't had time to develop a strategy in depth. That responsibility fell to Juli and Captain Roman, with input from the others.

"The fortress has three main weapons systems that are controlled separately," said Juli, standing in front of the console on the bridge, "so you won't be able to shut them down all at once. The first line of defense consists of one hundred forty-four mobile turrets orbiting the main structure. They receive commands from twelve control stations inside the fortress. It'll be up to Captain Roman's unit to disable those." She bent over the keyboard to adjust the display on the screen. "In the meantime, MOMO and the others should be able to get inside and take out the next line of defense. There are seven installations built into the walls of the fortress, but their control stations are linked together here, at the top of the central shaft. I'll warn you now, it's going to be difficult. And probably very dangerous. The three of you,"--her gaze passed briefly over MOMO, Ziggy, and Doctus--"will have to make it to the top on your own."

"But you'll have our support on the way out," said Roman. "We'll rendezvous in Sector 180 and proceed to the extraction point from there. We should be able to commandeer an escape capsule for the trip back."

"And Miyuki and I will be monitoring your progress from outside," Juli added.

"Understood." Ziggy studied the diagram on the screen behind her. "What about the third weapon?"

Juli drew a sharp, pained breath. For a moment her eyes had the desperate look Ziggy remembered seeing the day she had tried to dissuade him from taking on the Patmos assignment, but they hardened again as she found her resolve. "That one is located in the shaft below the main control room. It's linked directly to the Zohar emulator, and indirectly to the controls for the other two weapon systems. We think it can be disabled either by breaking the link with the emulator or destroying the weapon itself, but you'll have to shut down the primary and secondary defenses first."

"I see." He stared again at the diagram, trying to memorize the plan for the control room and the passage that led into it. "So the purpose of this facility is to provide energy for that weapon?"

Doctus shook her head. "That's part of it, but it's not the only purpose. The entire fortress is designed to act as an amplifier for the power source, and the central column has a structure similar to the AMN's axis. Once that thing starts up, it'll cause a spatial distortion that merges real and imaginary space around it, potentially allowing anything in the affected region to bypass the AMN safeguards and manifest in this domain."

"Including the shadow network?" MOMO stared up at Doctus in alarm. "If he--if Voyager manifests his will here, what will happen?"

"I hope we don't have to find out," said Doctus. "But since the Apocryphos is fully assembled now, whatever's going to happen may already have begun."

Ziggy stepped back from the console. When he closed his eyes he could still see the floor plan clearly in his mind; it was a mental exercise he often used to prepare himself for a mission. As long as he could focus on the plans before him, the calculations of strategy and the laws of survival, he could ignore everything else--the noise in his mind, the doubts and fears and half-recalled memories clamoring to resurface.

For once, despite the implications of what Doctus had just said, he felt detached from the situation and perfectly calm--at least on the surface, if he ignored the noise underneath. Voyager had already made it clear that his involvement with Ziggy was incidental to his true objective, and whatever happened now wouldn't just affect Ziggy or the people he knew: not just MOMO and Juli and the others, but all of Second Miltia and the Immigrant Fleet and the rest of the world, if Voyager's ambition reached beyond this place unchecked. Somehow he found it easier to focus when the stakes encompassed everything, when the consequences of failure were too enormous to comprehend. All he had to do was concentrate on his assignment. The rest lay beyond his control, but acknowledging that brought him relief for once, instead of despair.

After the briefing, he and MOMO and Doctus, Captain Roman and her team, and Juli and Miyuki, made their way from the bridge to the dock where Roman's ship had landed earlier. Once the AEWS and Doctus' AMWS had been transferred on board along with the rest of their equipment, the smaller ship left the _Dämmerung_ and short-jumped to a set of coordinates just outside the Apocryphos. The Special Ops ship had cloaking devices and visual camouflage similar to those used by Scientia, so approaching the fortress undetected should pose no difficulty; their first challenge would be making their way inside. Within a certain radius, Immigrant Fleet vessels thronged around the fortress like worshippers before a holy relic, but none of them took notice of the small Federation spacecraft in their midst, invisible to radar and human observation, an interloper among pilgrims.

As the ship neared the Apocryphos, they made their final preparations in the AMWS hangar on the lower deck.

"MOMO, I'd like you to go with Doctus," said Ziggy. "I'll go alone in the AEWS."

"But--"

He shook his head firmly. "It's for your protection. That goes for you too, Doctus." He didn't know how vulnerable she was in her current state, but since her repairs last time had taken so long, he suspected it was more than she admitted. "I don't want to see either of you trying anything heroic."

Doctus gave him an incredulous look, then shrugged. "What do you think, MOMO? Can we avoid all unnecessary heroism? That might prove difficult, especially if we end up having to haul this guy out of trouble again."

MOMO didn't answer. She had been unusually quiet and restless since before the meeting, and even more so afterward; several times he had caught her staring at him with concern. He could tell there was something on her mind, but now seemed the wrong time to ask.

"I mean it," said Ziggy. "If anything happens to me, concentrate on protecting each other and completing the mission. Remember what's at stake here; that should be your priority. Don't risk your lives on my account."

"Yes, sir." Doctus didn't bother to disguise her sarcasm. He stared into the hard lenses over her eyes. Below them, the rest of her face remained expressionless.

"All right," he said finally. "I'm not the one giving orders anyway. Do what you feel is necessary."

MOMO kept silent, but her eyes sought his for a brief second before she climbed into the co-pilot's seat on the _Astraea_. He wanted to reassure her, but he didn't know what to say; he couldn't put her fears about the mission at ease without deceiving her and himself. He boarded the AEWS and followed the larger craft out to the ship's airlock; as they neared the fortress, an AMN screen opened on the control panel in front of him.

"Jan, listen." Juli's voice sounded breathless under the static. "The shadow network is reacting with the spatial distortion. It's causing a lot of interference on the AMN, and it seems to be getting worse the closer we get to the center of the phenomenon. You can probably still communicate with each other over a short range, but you won't be able to reach us on the outside. Miyuki is alerting the others now. I don't know how much longer I'll be able to stay in contact with you, so ...." The transmission dropped out for a moment as flecks of white noise riddled the screen like bullet holes. "... sorry we never had a chance to finish our conversation."

Something caught in his throat. "I know. I wish we'd had more time. When we get back, I promise ...."

He paused. Static hissed from the blank screen. He waited a moment, then closed the connection.

Ahead of him, the _Astraea_ landed on a ledge before an opening in the outer wall of the fortress. He pushed forward and landed the AEWS beside it. From here he could make out the green-glass mirage of the Federation military ship as it dropped away below the ledge, following the curve of the wall farther down to where Captain Roman and her group would be landing.

"Still with us?" Doctus' voice crackled over the intercom, the transmission fuzzed with static but still intelligible. He looked ahead, saw the banded neon glow from the _Astraea_ diminishing down the passageway, and hurried to catch up. They passed through an airlock and emerged in the spiral corridor that wound the length of the fortress, curving up and around the central shaft. The corridor itself was constructed of a smooth black material, doorways marked with sector numbers spaced at intervals along its inward-sloping walls. The dark panels barely reflected the glow from white strips of light that arced like ribs between segments of wall, or the alternating dashes of red and violet guide-lights set into the floor; instead of illuminating the passage, the lights served only to outline a path in the darkness.

The sector numbers increased as they moved higher up the passage. At several points on the way they encountered guards--unmanned auto-techs and human soldiers piloting Nov-OS-issued AMWS units, neither of which proved much of a challenge against the combined output of the _Astraea_ and the AEWS. Still, their fighting set off alarms throughout the fortress; the white bars of light along the hallway throbbed red, and a broadcast announcement warned of intruders in a growing list of sectors, including several Ziggy was certain they hadn't passed through because the numbers were too low. It seemed Captain Roman's intrusion hadn't gone unnoticed either. But MOMO's group hadn't been able to make AMN contact with Roman's since they entered, and there was no way of confirming their status.

The hallway terminated in a dead end at the top of the spiral, spanned by a massive pair of doors inscribed with the numerals 364. Doctus and MOMO reached the door first, and when Ziggy arrived moments later, Doctus steered the AMWS aside. "Have at it," she said over the intercom.

"I'm disengaging the output restraints now." He charged the AEWS unit's blade weapon and gestured for MOMO and Doctus to stand clear. When he released the charge, a blue-white bar of energy arced from the sword's edge, throwing the AEWS back in recoil. The glare overloaded his optical sensors, blinding him until it died away; when his vision readjusted to normal, he found himself staring into a ragged opening like a mouth gaping in agony, its jaws bristling with torn edges of metal and frayed ends of wires.

"That ... really was kind of awesome," said MOMO after a few seconds of silence. "I guess Miyuki wasn't kidding."

"The guards are catching up with us." He sensed their pursuit farther down the passage before the AEWS' radar confirmed it. "We'll have to hurry and shut down the defense system before they get here."

They passed through the doorway into a drum-shaped chamber with a dais at the center, the uppermost extremity of the Apocryphos' main axis. Seven transparent columns rose from the platform to the ceiling, each one linked to a separate computer terminal at its base. Like the corridor outside, the room was black-walled, dark except for the guide-lights embedded in the floor and a cold watery glow from the cells. The light dimmed and brightened in time with the drone of machines beneath the dais, a sound that fell just within the low end of the range of human hearing, more easily felt than heard. The columns reminded Ziggy of what he had seen when he dived into the shadow network to find MOMO, and with the recollection a stirring of unease broke through his calm. He disembarked from the AEWS and walked over to the nearest of the terminals.

"Ziggy, be careful!" cried MOMO, her footsteps ringing like shots on the plated floor. "Those machines, they're connected to--"

But he had already seen it for himself. The plate at the base of the column read _05-SABAOTH_, and the body suspended above it held only a distant resemblance to what must have been human at one time. Crystalline structures branched from the limbs and shoulders and wreathed a dragonlike head retaining the vestigial imprint of a face, the features atrophied beyond recognition.

"Dear god," Doctus murmured at his side. "Is that some kind of Gnosis?"

He looked over, startled; he hadn't noticed her standing there, her upturned face carved hollow in the light, her lips drawn, for once not even pretending to smile.

"There are seven life forms here," said MOMO, "and I'm detecting Gnosis-like signatures from all of them. If they're not the same as the Gnosis, they could be the result of a similar phenomenon."

Ziggy shut his eyes, as if by doing so he could erase what he had seen, but the afterimage persisted, branded on the dark against his eyelids. "It's not unlikely. Human wills that have rejected this universe ... when you consider it that way, they're not much different from the Gnosis."

"'They'?" said Doctus.

"The people who were killed by Voyager. They gave up their lives to him because he promised them a better world, one without suffering or fear. But in order to embrace that world, they had to abandon this one." He opened his eyes; the draconian face stared back at him, sightless.

Something brushed against his arm, and he flinched before he realized it was MOMO. She drew back, pale and timid in the watery glow. "I ... I'm sorry," she whispered. "Is that what he ... is that what happened to your family?"

"I don't know." He turned his head aside, jaw clenched against the pressure in his throat. "The consciousnesses I saw in the shadow network didn't look like this. Maybe only a few of them were transformed. But why? What are they doing here?"

"Probably controlling the weapon system," said Doctus. "A conventional warship would use AMN-based artificial intelligences in a setup like this, but the shadow network is an organic existence; its operating system is an altered human mind. Given that arrangement, it would make sense if he was using the consciousnesses he imprisoned as the equivalent of control programs."

MOMO's gasp echoed from the drum-like walls. "You mean the same way Ormus was using Cecily and Cathe to control the Zohar?" Even in the stark lighting, her face had gone a shade paler. "Feb said their minds were trapped in a false world too. But that means ...."

"It's already too late to save them," he said. "And in order to shut down the weapon system, we have to eliminate what's controlling it."

Doctus nodded. "If it's any consolation, they probably won't feel anything."

"All right," said MOMO. "In that case ... I'll help you." She bowed her head and stepped back from the dais, hands clasped in concentration. "Activating the Hilbert Effect."

* * *

His heart still pounded in synch with the artificial heartbeat of that place as they made their way down the passage a few minutes later. In Sector 305 the guards caught up with them, blocking the way forward. The AEWS' cannons and the _Astraea_'s weaponry cut down row after row of armored tanks and AMWS craft and humanoid drones until they broke through, but they had gone only a short distance before they met another wave of defense.

"Damage levels critical!" MOMO shouted over the noise. "Doctus, we can't go on like this! We'll never make it back to Sector 180 at this rate."

"I'm aware of that!" said Doctus, her voice a knot of frustration. The transmission cut out abruptly as the _Astraea_ dodged fire from a Nov-OS AMWS across the corridor, then took it down in a flowering of missiles.

Ziggy searched the passage frantically. The junked remains of AMWS units and auto-techs littered the floor, and he sensed another group approaching from below. "Can you hold out for a minute longer?"

"We can give it our best shot," said Doctus.

"Ziggy, what are you--"

"Don't worry, MOMO." He charged the AEWS' blade again and aimed for a place along the outer wall of the passage. Targeting posed no difficulty--he just had to focus on the seam of light between two panels, where the integrity of the structure was most vulnerable. "Now, I want you to listen carefully, both of you." He took a deep breath, fighting a sudden wave of fatigue. The AEWS unit's armor had protected him from exertion, and it had taken longer than usual for the strain to catch up with him, but it was catching up with him now. He stared at the charge indicator on the control panel, straining to focus through the dark flashes and the litany of damage readings cluttering his visual field. "When I open the wall, get out, and get away from here. Once you leave the fortress, you'll have to move quickly; you'll have more range of movement out in the open, but you won't have much cover. I don't know what the situation's like out there, but you may still be able to meet up with Captain Roman and the others before you return to the ship. In any case, I'll try to catch up with you as soon as I'm done here."

"Ziggy, wait," MOMO started again, but Doctus cut her off.

"Got it, Captain. We'll be waiting for you. Don't worry, I'll protect MOMO and the others until you get back."

He breathed in deeply again, willing the dark clouds in his eyes to settle, the turmoil in his mind to grow still. "Thank you," he said. "For everything."

Before she could answer, he swung the blade overhead and slashed into the red strip of light. This time the rebound threw him back against the opposite wall, jarring him so hard against the pilot's harness that he blacked out for a few seconds, and when he opened his eyes he saw more blackness with the luminous outline of the AMWS inscribed on it, and then the _Astraea_ disappeared through the opening and the black of the walls merged into the starry darkness of space so he couldn't tell where the edges were. The AEWS was strong enough to resist the rush of escaping pressure that gathered up debris from the corridor and crammed it through the breach, but he still had to struggle with the controls to make it farther down the passage before emergency bulkheads closed off the sector behind him.


	29. 29

**29**

A haze enveloped the fortress, distorting the space around it like a heat mirage. After they leapt from the breach, Doctus had maneuvered to avoid the debris that escaped with them, and now the _Astraea_ drifted out toward the vanguard of the Immigrant Fleet. The Ormus vessels gathered closer now, a congregation the size of a planetary system, oriented toward the object of their worship like iron filings around a magnet.

MOMO checked the radar; the AMN-linked instruments had begun to respond again now that they were clear of the spatial shift. "Doctus, I'm going to try to get in contact with the ship." Her voice trembled, and she swallowed and reached for the controls. "Mommy, are you there? Miyuki?"

She waited, holding her breath--for hours, it seemed, although her observational system had a time-keeping function that counted off less than a minute before a window flickered open in front of her, the tiny figures of her mother and Miyuki superimposed in miniature over the main display.

"MOMO!" Juli looked the way MOMO felt, her expression a mask of relief pulled taut over a chasm of worry. "Are you all right? What happened?"

"We couldn't make it to the rendezvous point," said MOMO, trying to keep her voice level. "We shut down the second defense system, but we had to escape before we met up with Captain Roman. And Ziggy is still--" Something jagged and sharp surfaced in her throat and she turned away, unable to continue.

"--On his way," Doctus finished for her, intervening before Juli had a chance to ask what had happened. "He just has to take care of a few things first."

"I understand," said Juli, in a tone that suggested she hadn't bought Doctus' reassurance. "I'm glad the two of you got out safely. We're trying to stay clear of the distortion field so we can maintain AMN contact with the _Dämmerung_, but we're still waiting for Captain Roman outside Sector 180. Can you get there from where you are?"

MOMO looked past the smaller screen to the view outside; it might have been a still-frame picture, the dark-violet whorl of the Apocryphos and the waiting ranks of the Immigrant Fleet poised motionless above the curve of Second Miltia's horizon. "It looks like we won't have any trouble," she said. "So I guess we'll see you soon."

"All right, MOMO. I'll ... see you soon." With a strained smile, Juli closed the transmission. It felt strange, trivial somehow, as if they were parting ways before heading off to work in the morning, back at home on Fifth Jerusalem. But they were a long way from home now. MOMO blinked and wiped her eyes, hoping Doctus hadn't noticed the catch in her voice.

But Doctus was busy piloting the _Astraea_ back toward the fortress, and suddenly she jerked back on the controls, biting off a curse. "We've got trouble."

"What?" MOMO's sensors detected the approaching signals a moment before a flash lit up the _Astraea_'s monitors, and the AMWS jolted as the impact slammed into its side. Warning lights flashed along the control panel, indicating multiple system failures. "What's happening?" she cried, struggling to sit upright as Doctus steered out of the way of a second round of missiles. A formation of auto-techs--the same Nov-OS models they had encountered inside the Apocryphos--spiraled free of the distortion field and closed in on the AMWS, firing when they came within range. MOMO recovered her bearings and fired back, but the weapons had been damaged in the last hit and were slow to respond.

"What's happening is we're getting the hell out of here before we're blown to bits," said Doctus through clenched teeth. She worked the controls, and the _Astraea_ leapt back, dodging another blast.

MOMO kept firing and managed to take down one or two auto-techs while the rest continued their pursuit. She noticed the Apocryphos growing smaller on the main display, sinking like a shell in dark water, while the AMWS headed into the midst of the Immigrant Fleet. "Doctus, wait! We're going the wrong way! What about Mommy and the others? What about Ziggy?"

"I'm sorry, MOMO, but we can't do anything for them now. They might still be able to escape, but if we try to go back, we'll just get killed." Another wave of auto-techs had appeared behind the first, and the _Astraea_ hastened its retreat. "We're not in any condition to fight. At least if we hide out among the enemy, we'll stand a better chance of surviving until the situation changes."

"But we can't just abandon them!" She gripped the side rails of the co-pilot's seat. "Take us back now, please. You've got to take us back! Doctus!"

"Listen to me!" said Doctus, with an unaccustomed fierceness that startled MOMO into silence. "You remember what he said before we left the ship, right? If anything happened, we were to protect each other. Do you know how terrible he would feel if he found out you had risked your life going back for him? Do you want him to suffer any more?"

"N-no, but--"

"You and your mother are the most important things in the world to him." Her voice had gone quiet again. "If I can only save one of you, well ... I'd rather that than have you all die at once. And from an objective standpoint, you happen to be the most useful. You're currently the single most valuable piece of technology in the star cluster. I hate to frame it in those terms, but we literally can't afford to lose you."

MOMO wanted to be angry with Doctus for talking about her as if she were just another piece of equipment, but she couldn't rouse herself to anger. Instead she stared out at the dwindling shape of the fortress, wishing she could reach down and pull Ziggy and the others out of the way of harm. Maybe Doctus wouldn't have risked MOMO's life to save them, but MOMO would have risked her own. At last she thought she knew how Ziggy had felt that day in the cathedral on the shadow network, when he'd let her go.

"I'm sorry," said Doctus, as if hearing in her silence what she had left unspoken. "I'm not doing this only for your sake. It may seem unkind to you, but I think he would understand my logic."

MOMO clenched her fists in her lap, crumpling her skirt. She understood it too, but she didn't think it was right. The lighted control panel jumped and wavered in front of her eyes, and she blinked away her tears until it steadied itself. Because she still couldn't bring herself to speak, she swallowed and nodded.

* * *

"_Attention, all crew and personnel. Intruders have been detected on the premises. All sectors are now on alert. Any unauthorized persons to be eliminated on sight. Repeat, intruders have been detected on the premises ...._"

Lapis Roman made her way along the passage with the surviving members of her unit. The control stations for the orbital defense modules had been manned, and the operators had put up a fight. Roman had never seen a military band so expertly coordinated. The Ormus soldiers moved like separate limbs of the same body, like agents of the same will. She forced back a shudder at the memory of the first man she had killed after they came on board--the vacancy in his eyes as he stared through her, the faint uncomprehending smile as she brought him down in a spattering of bullets.

Just over half of Roman's twelve-member team--five Special Ops commandos and an observational Realian--had survived the assault on the outer defense system, and all but two of their AMWS units had been destroyed. The losses were unacceptable, but she had no time to mourn for them now, or to find fault with her own leadership; that would come later, after they escaped.

The two soldiers piloting AMWS units ahead of her stopped short. She came up behind them, about to reprimand them for stalling, when she saw what blocked their way--a flickering, translucent shadow taking up most of the passage ahead, the red and violet lighting panels blurring behind it.

She grabbed the Realian's shoulder and pointed at the thing. "What is that?"

"I don't know, ma'am," said the 100 series frantically. "Its behavior is Gnosis-like, but it's not a Gnosis, unless it's a new kind we haven't seen before."

Roman swore. The plans hadn't said anything about a new form of Gnosis. "It must be a result of the spatial shift. Will it respond to the Hilbert Effect?"

"I can try to find out," said the 100 series. She concentrated, emanating luminous waves, and Roman felt the familiar indescribable shift in local reality as the effect spread through the area. For a moment, while the shape in the corridor remained semi-transparent, she thought she saw figures trapped inside it, half-human faces smiling or screaming, hands grasping and clawing, but then the edges of the shadow grew opaque and she couldn't see them anymore.

The two AMWS pilots discharged their units' weapons into the mass, but it absorbed the blasts and surged back at them. Still gripping the 100 series by the arm, Roman jumped out of the way as the AMWS units went down in a purple-black display of fireworks. From behind her, the remaining three members of her team rushed forward into the fray.

"Stop it!" yelled Roman, but no one heard her over the noise of battle. "Cease fire! Retreat!"

Another violet flare erupted around them, erasing the soldiers where they stood. Swearing again, she turned and headed back down the corridor, hauling the Realian behind her. There must be another way to the escape hangar. She tried to recall the plans, the maze of side routes off the main passage.

Voices echoed farther down the corridor, a few sectors away. The guards here all had AMWS units and auto-techs; with the rest of her team gone, Roman would be no match for them. She ducked into the shallow overhang of a doorway and motioned for the Realian to join her.

A group of soldiers emerged around a turn in the passage, traveling on foot and looking nervous. They kept glancing around restlessly and gesturing at each other, aiming their weapons into niches and side passages as they advanced. One of them peered straight into the doorway where Roman had concealed herself, and Roman found herself staring back into his eyes through the dark visor of his helmet. He staggered backward, more startled than she was, but he recovered in the next instant and trained his gun at her. "Over here!"

The other soldiers stopped and rushed back to the doorway, weapons drawn. Roman winced and gritted her teeth; beside her, she felt the Realian inch closer.

"That's a Federation uniform she's wearing," said one of the soldiers. "And a 100 series with her. What the hell's the Fed doing here?"

"It's just as His Holiness believed," said a woman standing next to him. "Those blasphemers, they're in league with our enemies! No wonder they had the resources to build this abomination--they've been working with the Federation all along." She jabbed the barrel of her weapon under the Realian's chin, forcing her head back. "How disgusting."

"Wait a minute," said Roman, and she had to stop herself from adding, you idiots, do you have any idea what's up ahead? "Are you with--are you the followers of Patriarch Julius?"

"Where did you hear that name?" The woman swung her weapon over to Roman now, shoving the barrel into her ribs. "Answer me, you godless Federation trash! How dare you speak the name of our holy father!"

Roman took a deep breath, feeling the pressure of the gun against her chest, her heart hammering from the other side. "There's been a misunderstanding," she said. "We're not with the Executor. My unit was sent to infiltrate this facility and shut down its defenses. But listen, there's--" A muted crash sounded from the passage above. The Realian let out a strangled whimper and flinched against Roman's side.

"She's lying!" said another soldier. "Brother Keil and Brother Magni shut down the defense system, they got the access codes from an inside source--"

"Listen!" Roman shouted. "Do you know how to get out of here? Because if you don't, there's a good chance we'll all be killed."

One of the soldiers, who had gone to scout the way ahead, doubled back at a run. "Sir, there's some kind of--"

The walls and floor of the passageway shuddered. Roman clenched her eyes shut and braced herself against the door. "It's a Gnosis," she said through her teeth, "or something like it."

"Damn it." The woman who had pointed the gun at her grabbed Roman's arm and hauled her out of the doorway. "You're coming with us."

"Take the Realian too," said another soldier. "It can use the Hilbert Effect if we run into anything."

The woman jerked on Roman's arm again, and Roman staggered a few steps and caught her balance as the group started back down the passage.

* * *

MOMO watched as the dark blur of the Apocryphos dropped away behind the ranks of battered Ormus vessels and discarded Federation ships and other craft she didn't recognize, except that they had all arrived here for the same reason. The _Astraea_ drifted out among the Immigrant Fleet unnoticed, too small or insignificant to attract any attention.

Her eyes and mouth had gone dry, and the sharp feeling had lodged in her throat so that it hurt to swallow, even to breathe. She hadn't said goodbye to Ziggy before they escaped, and now, watching the haze of distortion expand around the fortress, she realized she might never see him again. Even if he could stop the last weapon on his own, he'd still have to escape and make his way back to the ship. And if he couldn't stop it, something even worse would happen, and--

She hadn't said goodbye to Juli the last time they spoke, either.

MOMO tried to swallow again, to force down the prickly feeling in her throat. "Have you been able to get in contact with them yet?"

"Not yet." Doctus had been trying since they retreated from the auto-techs, but the connection never went through. "The net's pretty backed up all of a sudden. All the government channels are jammed, so I can't get through to your mother's connection gear either."

MOMO felt something clench in her stomach, a spasm of discomfort like the first sign of nausea. "What about the radio?"

"Good call." Doctus reached for the backup radio transmitter. In the early stages of the AMN Project, before the communications infrastructure had been restored, conventional radio broadcasts had been the only viable means of relaying messages over long distances; with the renaissance of instantaneous communication across the AMN, the radio channels had fallen back into disuse. But as Doctus flipped through the channels, a garble of static filled the cockpit above a profusion of what sounded like human voices, their words distorted and unintelligible. She raised an eyebrow above the rim of her glasses. "Sounds like the tower of Babel out there."

"Are they all trying to use the emergency radio channels?" MOMO hunched down in her seat, feeling the twinge of unease sink deeper. She tried to make sense of the voices, but the volume of information overwhelmed her circuits and made her nausea even worse, so she gave up.

"So much for that idea," said Doctus, her voice tense with irritation as she turned off the radio. "It might've been a good one if everyone in Second Miltian space hadn't arrived at the same conclusion first."

MOMO stared back at the main screen, but the knot in her stomach twisted up tighter every time she saw the wavering mass around the Apocryphos. Instead she tried to focus on Second Miltia; the fraction of its surface she could see from here looked still and peaceful, and she wondered if the people down there had any idea what surrounded them. She thought about people like Helmer and Juli and Captain Roman, who had worked to prevent all this from happening, and how hopeless they must have felt when it happened anyway. MOMO thought she was beginning to understand that feeling. She hadn't told any of them about the plan, the one she had arranged before they left the _Dämmerung_, and it seemed silly and childish now, a desperate grab at a solution for a problem she still didn't entirely understand. Not that it made any difference now, but she wished she had told someone outside the AMN Development Committee's programming team. Then maybe it wouldn't keep weighing on her like a terrible secret. But she had made the rest of the programming team swear not to tell, and she had sworn with them; secrecy had been part of the plan too, and it wouldn't be fair if she told.

Doctus sat behind MOMO in the pilot's harness, studying the radar screen. She was the last person MOMO wanted to know about the plan, but at this rate she would be the first to find out.

"Well, guess who finally showed up to the party," said Doctus, after they had sat in silence for several minutes.

MOMO checked her own screen. At the edge of the Immigrant Fleet, a cluster of signals tagged as Federation vessels moved in formation. "Is that the reinforcements?"

"Sure looks like it. They're the first ones to arrive, and probably not the last."

Fear and dismay pulled the knot in her stomach even tighter as she studied the movements of blips on the radar, points of light assuming attack patterns like an army of militant fireflies. "It looks like they've started fighting already." She twisted around in her seat. "What are we going to do if the fighting reaches here?"

Doctus shrugged and sat back in her own seat, crossing her arms. "Hope they settle their differences before it escalates that far? Damned if I know." She was quiet for a while, and then MOMO heard her murmuring quietly under her breath; it sounded like a few verses from an old song, or a poem. Her voice trailed off, and she leaned forward again and checked the local AMN channels. "Still jammed. Looks like it's getting worse. I wonder if it's all the military activity in this area that's doing it." She sighed. "Since we're passing the time, you want to hear a story about the founder of Scientia?"

"You mean--" MOMO searched her database for the name, but Doctus cut her off before she could retrieve it

"Yeah, her. That poem was a favorite of hers. She said it reminded her of someone she used to admire. She was kind of sentimental that way."

MOMO calculated briefly. Scientia had been founded about a hundred years ago, and Doctus was at least old enough to have known Ziggy when he was a captain, so that meant .... "Did you know her? In person, I mean?"

"Something like that." She made a sound, a catch in her throat that might have been a laugh. "She's the one who drew up the original plans for the AMN. But no one's heard from her in years."

MOMO risked another glance at the Apocryphos; the distortion field had expanded to nearly twice its diameter since the last time she had looked. It reached halfway to the first line of Immigrant Fleet ships now, like dark water welling up from a spring, with the shell of the fortress submerged at the bottom of it. "I wonder," said MOMO cautiously, "what she would think if she saw all this."

Doctus was silent again, and MOMO knew better than to press the question.


	30. 30

**30**

The Julian soldiers knew an alternate route to Sector 180, a shortcut through side passages and segment-address corridors so far removed from the main paths they hadn't even been marked on the plans, or else they hadn't been part of the original plans at all. Roman gathered from their inside knowledge of the Apocryphos' layout, and from the snatches of conversation she caught as they made their way through the hidden passages, that the Julian Sect had been planning to strike some sort of coup against the Executor and his followers, and that they had managed to infiltrate a number of the remote production facilities involved with Project Apocryphos. The soldiers who had captured her were one of several groups who had stowed away inside the component units of the fortress during the hyperspace transfer, some in hiding and others posing as authorized staff and personnel. But she also gathered that their plans hadn't worked out quite as they intended, and now they were retreating in a panic, just as eager to escape as she was.

As they arrived in the Sector 180 hangar, the soldiers ahead of her stopped abruptly, and for a moment Roman flinched back as well, remembering the Gnosis-like shadow in the corridor. So far they had been fortunate; they hadn't encountered anything like it on the way here, but they had felt the aftershocks of heavy impacts jolting through the fortress, and no one wanted to venture any guesses as to what they were. If the Gnosis phenomenon broke out again on a wide scale .... But Roman didn't want to think about the consequences. The Federation had spent the last two years dismantling its anti-Gnosis military programs; the 100-series Realians were the only anti-Gnosis equipment still in use, and that was because the other functions they served had made them indispensable to the military even when they were no longer needed to combat the Gnosis.

Roman wrenched free of the soldiers' grip on her arm--they seemed less interested, now, in keeping an eye on her than in escaping with their own lives--and pushed past the others to see what had stopped them. The sight hit her in the stomach, driving a wave of nausea up into her throat, and she turned away feeling lightheaded.

"What do you know about this?" said the woman who had confronted her earlier. "It was your unit that butchered our comrades, wasn't it?"

"Look," said Roman angrily, shaking her head so that the tails of her hair swayed, "I told you I have no idea what you're talking about. I've never seen these men before. But if we don't get out of here--"

She didn't have to finish. The floor of the hangar shuddered beneath them as a tremor arose from deep within the fortress, and by the time the aftershocks subsided they were running to board the escape capsules. In the confusion, Roman grabbed the Realian's hand and dragged her to an empty capsule. She hoisted the Realian inside first, then scrambled to climb in after her.

"She's trying to escape! Stop her!"

Shots pinged against the hull of the escape capsule. Something hot and sharp bit through Roman's ankle as she pulled her leg inside, and then the door panel slammed into place and more shots spattered into the hull as the capsule lifted off and accelerated toward the mouth of the hangar.

* * *

On the bridge of the Federation ship, Juli stared into the spreading blur of distortion around the fortress. Shadows surrounded it now, like a wreath of smoke obscuring the object at its center, and the ship had retreated farther and farther back from the edge, driven up toward the front lines of the Immigrant Fleet.

_I'll see you soon,_ MOMO had said. But that had been almost an hour ago, and they had received no word from the _Astraea_ since then. And the resignation in Ziggy's eyes and in his voice the last time he'd spoken to her, over the static on the AEWS' intercom, had given her no reassurance either.

Letting them go this time had been the hardest thing she had ever done, harder than all the other times she had knowingly, and with their agreement, sent them into danger. They had returned safely from greater dangers before, but knowing that didn't make waiting any easier; it only made it more agonizing, her nerves fraying to shreds as she wondered whether this time, in spite of all their plans and resources and last-minute strategies .... But she couldn't even bring herself to admit the possibility, as if the act of acknowledging it would make it happen.

She walked over to an observational post and touched the Realian's arm gently. "Any sign of them yet?"

The Realian shook her head. "Negative, ma'am. We still can't get through anywhere. In addition to the spatial distortion, there are enormous amounts of data traveling through the AMN from an unknown source. All the standard channels are completely backed up; even the Federation Fleet is having difficulty coordinating its movements. At this rate it'll take hours to restore communications."

"How is that possible?" Juli peered around her at the screen, her apprehension flaring to a sudden spike of alarm. "It would take every terminal in the star cluster transmitting simultaneously to back up the network to that extent. What in the world could be sending all that information?" She leaned closer, peering into the flood of data cascading up the monitor. "It isn't ... it can't be the same as two years ago," she said, more for her own reassurance than out of any real conviction. _Because if it is,_ she thought, _we're done for._ The Federation couldn't survive another disappearance phenomenon, not when the last had reduced it to a fraction of its former size. "Can you tell what it is?"

The Realian twisted around in her seat, and for a moment Juli had the impression of staring down into a face that mirrored both of her daughters' faces at once. She had always found it disorienting, like catching a glimpse of a familiar person in a crowd who turned out to be a stranger; now the near-recognition struck too close to her fears, reminded her that one of her daughters was long dead and the other was still outside, stranded somewhere between the Immigrant Fleet and the fortress. "Negative," said the Realian. "It just looks like a lot of noise."

"Excuse me," said Juli. The Realian moved aside and Juli leaned over the keyboard. She glared at the screen, biting her lip in frustration. "You're right. I can't make sense of any of this." It wasn't Lemegeton, or the data that had moved through the UMN two years ago, collapsing the Federation in its wake, but it wasn't the shadow network either; at least, the shadow network didn't appear to be acting on the AMN directly, although the two were so inextricably entwined that a real intrusion would be nearly impossible to detect. "It looks like some sort of virus in the source code. The AMN structure itself is being altered."

"Altered?" Miyuki came up behind her, leaning over the back of the chair to see the monitor. "Who could be doing such a thing?"

Juli was too deep in concentration to pull her eyes away from the screen. "I don't know, Miyuki. I'm not sure where the virus came from. I suppose the enemy, or the shadow network itself, could be hacking into the AMN to block our communications, or--" She couldn't go on, because she couldn't decide which of the dozens of other worst-case scenarios crowding at the front of her mind was the most likely, or the most troubling.

"Wait a minute!" cried Miyuki, pushing past Juli and the Realian and usurping the chair for herself. "I recognize that file signature. That's not a virus, it's ... some kind of proprietary code developed by the AMN Division. And ...." Her hands trembled as she entered a few rapid keystrokes. "And it looks like it was uploaded to the AMN just a few hours ago. But that's impossible!" She wheeled around in the chair, eyes wide with dismay. "If I'm right, then this program would have to have been transmitted from somewhere inside the _Dämmerung_."

"What?" Juli's thoughts raced again; the last thing she needed now was another conspiracy. She gripped Miyuki's shoulder. "You mean someone in the AMN Division is sabotaging the network?"

"I--I don't know," Miyuki stammered, her jaw quivering. "But it sure looks that way. And if it keeps up at this rate, the AMN won't be able to handle all that traffic. It'll just shut down, and--" She gave a shudder and turned away, clutching her face in her hands. "All of our hard work, and--and everything. We'll have to start all over."

Juli stepped back slowly from the terminal. Somehow, she didn't think they would have to worry about starting over. They wouldn't get another chance.

"Ma'am, could I speak with you a moment?"

She looked toward the new speaker, one of Captain Roman's subordinates who had remained aboard the ship. In Roman's absence, he was the highest-ranking officer in the unit. "What is it?" said Juli when he had led her aside, away from the observation deck.

The officer shifted his stance uncomfortably and looked back at her, not quite meeting her eyes. "In accordance with your status as a government official," he said, "I'm required to inform you that we'll be short-jumping back to the _Dämmerung_ in approximately fifteen minutes. I'm sorry, ma'am," he hastened to add, recoiling from whatever he saw on her face as the realization dawned there. "My orders came from Captain Roman herself. I--"

"What orders?" Juli didn't raise her voice; she didn't have to.

The officer cleared his throat and recited as if he had memorized the words: "In the event the extraction of one or both parties is unable to proceed as planned, our first priority is to escort you and Miss Itsumi safely back to Vector headquarters."

"So if I understand correctly," she said in the same measured tone, "you're planning to abort the mission, abandon Captain Roman and the others, and--"

"Negative. The mission was a partial success. As of our last available report both the primary and secondary defense systems had been disabled, and attempts to shut down the third were under way. But we've lost contact with both units; we can't even reach them via radio with all this interference. And there's no telling how long the AMN transport system will hold out. If the column infrastructure collapses or we get pulled into the spatial distortion--" He swallowed, and finally summoned the nerve to look her in the eyes. "Ma'am, fifteen minutes is the best I can do."

"I see." Juli stared across the bridge. "I understand this vessel is equipped with several escape units in compliance with standard evacuation procedures. Is that correct, officer?"

He seemed startled when she addressed him again, as if he had thought she was only musing to herself. "Yes, ma'am."

"Please have one prepared for me at once. You can take Miss Itsumi back to the _Dämmerung_; I'll wait here for the others."

He gaped at her in silence until he realized what she was asking him to do, and then he shook his head. "I'm afraid I can't allow you to leave the ship, Dr. Mizrahi. That would be in direct violation of Captain Roman's orders--"

"_Subcommittee Member_ Mizrahi," she corrected him, a cold sting in her voice now. "And as you mentioned earlier, in accordance with my status as a government official, I believe I have the authority to override Captain Roman's orders. If that weapon isn't shut down before the AMN collapses, it won't matter whether we're here or on the _Dämmerung_ or a thousand light-years across the galaxy; we won't be able to escape the repercussions. You can carry out your orders if you still find it necessary to do so; however, I'll be staying here." She pinned the officer under her gaze, waiting for his answer, defying him to contradict her again.

"She's right," said Miyuki, approaching Juli from behind. She sounded uncharacteristically somber, her optimism swept away from the hard resolve underneath. "If MOMO and the others don't come back, there's a good chance none of us will. Besides, even if we managed to escape, I'd never be able to live with myself if we just abandoned them." She pressed a firm hand on Juli's shoulder. "I'd like to stay here too, if that's okay."

Finding himself outnumbered, the officer gave a futile shake of his head. "I've already issued the coordinates for the jump back to the _Dämmerung_. It's too late to change our course--"

"Permission to speak freely, sir?" A small, almost-familiar voice: even now it made Juli's breath catch for an instant, even though she knew it couldn't possibly be the same.

She glanced back along the observation deck. At each station sat a near-perfect copy of the same individual, the same eyes returning Juli's gaze from a dozen identical faces. She couldn't tell which of them had spoken first, nor whether it was the same Realian or another who continued when the officer gave his assent to the request.

"We'd like to stay and wait for MOMO," said one, but they might as well have been speaking in unison. "As her sisters, we feel that we have a responsibility to ensure her safe return. If there is any way we can be of assistance, we would be pleased to help."

In spite of herself, Juli felt a sharp burning ache in her throat and swallowed hard to suppress it as she turned back toward the officer. "Well," she said, fighting to retain her composure, "I suppose if you're still intent on returning to the _Dämmerung_, you can always take one of the escape pods yourself."

"That ... won't be necessary," said the officer, a faint tremor in his voice, as if it had just occurred to him that he was witnessing a mutiny.

Juli pulled a taut smile. "I'm glad that's settled, then."

Leaving the officer, she strode back along the observation deck, aware of the dozen pairs of eyes still following her as she approached the main screen. Swallowing again, she gathered her remaining strength and peered out into the wavering depths, to wait for their return or the end of the world--whichever came first.

* * *

MOMO stared down at her hands, saw them trembling in the red warning glare from the monitors.

"Are you okay?" said Doctus, making her jump.

"Y-yes," said MOMO; her voice shook as fiercely as her hands did. "Are the reinforcements still arriving?"

"I think so," said Doctus. "The hyperspace transport system appears to be functioning normally, but the rest of the net's still down. The radar's getting jammed too. And the spatial phenomenon around Apocryphos is still expanding. If we don't get caught up in the fighting, then ...."

MOMO nodded, silent. They were trapped between two advancing waves, waiting to see which one would break first. "Doctus," she said after a few minutes, "did you know?"

"Did I what?"

"Know. About the shadow network. About what would happen if we tried to link the real and imaginary-number domains." She stared into her lap again, bunching her skirt in her fists. "You didn't, did you?"

For a long moment the only sound was the static from the monitors. "No," said Doctus finally. "Not all of it. I knew there would be unforeseen consequences, but I never imagined anything like this. And if I had known, I ... well, I suppose I would have thought twice about it. I guess we all would've, if we had known more. But it's a little late for that now, isn't it?"

"Yes. No," said MOMO, shaking her head. "I mean, it's too late to prevent what's already happened. But it might not be too late to stop it, right? If the AMN shuts down, maybe ...."

"You think we can just rebuild it all over again, is that it?" The sudden edge in Doctus' voice, hard as a blow from the flat of her hand, made MOMO flinch. "You think it's going to be that easy? Scientia's plan was the result of a hundred years of research. We can't just--"

"I know. I'm sorry. I just thought ...." She narrowed her eyes, smearing the blur of light across the sliver of her field of vision that remained. "I thought maybe if I stopped it for a while, it would stop the shadow network too."

"_You_--" This time her tone made MOMO jerk around in her seat. Even behind the inscrutable shells of her glasses, Doctus' gaze was fierce, terrifying, and MOMO had to look away. "You're the one who's flooding the AMN?"

MOMO couldn't answer; she bit her lip and stared through the blur in her eyes. A tear dropped from her chin and landed on the back of her hand, and somehow that made her feel a hundred times more wretched. She cleared her throat and wiped her eyes on her sleeve. "I told the programming team to do it. After the meeting."

To MOMO's horror, Doctus began laughing, and not in the smug, cynical way she usually did. She sounded genuinely amused, or appalled, or insane--it was hard to tell. "You really are Mizrahi's little girl, aren't you? I have to admit, I'm impressed. I didn't know you had it in you to be so ruthless."

MOMO nodded miserably. She hadn't known either.


	31. 31

**31**

Pain dulled by exhaustion slowed his movements, blunted his thoughts, and he struggled to keep his mind on edge, to focus on the plans and his own strategy. _Concentrate on the mission._ That way, he wouldn't have to think about MOMO and Juli and the others; concern for what was happening outside would only distract him, and his distraction might get them killed.

When he encountered guards he tore through their ranks with the AEWS' sword, leaving most of them standing, crippled but intact, in his wake. Even if he had been able to finish them all off alone, he didn't think he'd have enough time, and he stood a better chance of outrunning them; the AEWS was smaller and more agile than the AMWS units.

As he neared his destination he reviewed the layout of the fortress one last time. Sector 365, the main control room, stood about halfway down the central shaft between Sector 364 at the top and Sector 182 at the midpoint. In the sector adjacent to the control room another formation of auto-techs flew at him and he fought them all off this time, left their smoking shells in the main passage as he turned down a side corridor, barely stopping at the doors that sealed off the first security checkpoint before he blasted them apart. By the time he broke through the last set of doors, he detected another group of signals approaching from below. He wouldn't have much time to disable the third weapon before they arrived, but at least he wouldn't have to worry about finding an escape route afterward.

And he might not be able to hold out much longer anyway. As he piloted the AEWS through the doorway his sight dimmed, and his surroundings telescoped into the void until his life-support machinery kicked in and the world rushed back hard and fast and left him reeling with vertigo. _Memento mori,_ Doctus might have called it. As if a dead man needed any reminder that his time was running out.

Darkness surrounded him. He looked back, but he could no longer see the doorway behind him and even the faint red-glazed light from the passageway had gone. Only the dull glow from the instrument panels told him he was still inside the AEWS, but he might have been adrift in an abyss; there was no way to tell whether the world around him even existed anymore. As his heart rate slowed back to normal, no longer racing to catch up with the beats it had missed, the howling in his ears gave way to silence, disturbed only by the hiss of static from the AEWS' monitors and the pervasive thrumming heartbeat of the fortress itself--its pulse stronger and steadier now than his own.

Uncertain of his surroundings, he climbed down from the pilot's seat and found a solid floor below, although he couldn't see it. He didn't seem to be in the control room anymore; the place felt vast and empty, and the echoes of his footsteps returned as if from a long way off.

In the distance ahead a light gleamed, a white-gold star. Trepidation stirred inside him for reasons he couldn't explain; it seemed instinctive, a strictly physical reaction, distanced from his thoughts and from his determination to maintain his composure.

A few strides brought him closer to the light, and suddenly it surrounded him. As his sensors adjusted he made out as if from memory the intricate vertical lines of the stonework, the monolith of the altar, the unbearably bright form inscribed in it, no longer a solid object but a negative space, an opening through which that world flowed into this one--

_This isn't happening again._ Somewhere at the back of his mind, a voice screamed against the silence and was lost, like a whisper inside a cathedral. _This can't be happening, it isn't real--_

--and standing below the altar, silhouettes burned white by the light pouring down from above, their backs turned, their heads upraised in reverence, in rapture, now in agony, the light burning through them, burning them away--

--and he forgot his mission, forgot where he had come from, forgot that a hundred years had passed since that day, and as he had done countless times in his nightmares he rushed forward, knowing this time it would be different, this time--

_This time I'll save them._

--and collapsed to his knees as their blood shot red through the whiteness and their flesh and bone dissolved to ashes.

He staggered halfway to his feet and fell, the world flashing black-red-white before his eyes; exhaustion overwhelmed him and he didn't try to stand again.

"Look at you," whispered a soft voice above him, mocking in its pity, "reduced to this. Condemned to walk the world as a shell of what you were, reliving your nightmares forever. And it could all have been avoided if you'd listened to me the first time."

"What is it you want from me?"

The voice broke into laughter. "I'm sure you'll figure it out. You've arrived just in time for the holy sacrament to begin."

Ziggy lifted his head from the red-washed floor. A cloaked silhouette stood in the way of the light: a shadow that was more than mere absence, an opening into darkness. "What are you planning to do?"

"You're too late, you know," said Voyager. "Once the sacrifice is made, I'll have enough power to reach across the universe--even to Lost Jerusalem. Everything will be drawn into that singularity. I'll encompass everything, and then I'll determine what is real."

"So that's why you caused all of this to happen?" The terrorist incidents, the war, and now the attack on Second Miltia--Voyager had orchestrated all of it, just so he could offer an illusion to end it. Fighting weakness, Ziggy pushed himself to his knees. "You said you wanted to save this world. But if you don't stop this, you'll destroy everything. Is that really your intention?"

"You can't save what you're unwilling to destroy. And I intend to do both." Voyager lifted his gaze to the luminous outline above, and the light carved shadows on his face. "Haven't you ever wondered why humans put their faith in God? It's not because they're satisfied with their lives. They believe in God because they suffer, and they beg for the mercy of an illusion to save them from their suffering. It's in moments of desperation that people turn to God. They rely on their gods to save them when no one else can. And in their despair they'll turn to me. And I will lead them to a new world--one of my own creation, under my control. The compassion of the gods is often seen as cruel from the point of view of mortals, but the fact remains that this world will have to be shattered before it can be reborn. Just as you yourself had to die before you could be given a chance to redeem your life." He laughed again. "Although it seems you didn't make very good use of that chance, did you? Tell me, what happened to the people you tried to protect? Are any of them still alive to thank you for your efforts?"

Ziggy was silent. For the first time he allowed himself to consider what had happened to MOMO and Doctus after they had escaped, or where Juli and the others were now, and he realized he didn't know. He didn't even know where he was anymore--somewhere between real and imaginary space, he thought, but that could be anywhere, or nowhere. He hauled himself upright, forcing himself to stand although everything in him felt broken. "Where are we?"

Voyager furled out a black-draped arm to describe the space within the cathedral walls, the soaring lines of the vault, the red spilling down the steps before the altar. "Look around you; this is the eternal prison you've been trapped in for a century. And the world you left behind, the bloodstained, war-torn world outside, that's the new world you were fighting for. Is one any better than the other? A recurring nightmare, or a world destined to destroy itself? Perhaps I'll let you decide."

Before Ziggy could ask what he meant, the white light from the Zohar faded to the muted gleam of the emulator, a ray of sunlight caught in a dull mirror, and the cathedral sank back into darkness until only the altar remained. A red-tinged glow strained down on it from an unseen place, illuminating two figures in the shaft above the stone; they hung there in stasis like specimens preserved in a fluid, joined to each other by a helix of translucent cords, their bodies warped and distorted but not altogether transformed. Unlike the seven he had encountered in Sector 364, they still held some resemblance to their former selves, and Ziggy recognized them for who they were, for what they had been, even as his entire being revolted against what he saw. But he couldn't give voice to his denial when he already knew the truth, and instead he stood speechless, cast into a place beyond horror and beyond grief, so far beyond despair that he felt nothing.

Voyager watched in deep and terrible satisfaction as the recognition dawned, until he knew by the emptiness in Ziggy's eyes that the sight had broken him. "Would you like to know why I've brought them here?" he said, in a tone of patient condescension that barely contained his triumph. "What you see before you is the entity that controls Yaldabaoth, the final weapon of Apocryphos. They're not quite as you remember them, but they remember you. Oh yes, they remember everything. When my consciousness was scattered in the imaginary domain, they managed to escape from my control for a short time, thanks to the intervention of a certain being, and there they encountered the truth of what they had done. They realized they had betrayed you, and they also knew that you failed to save them from the fate they had chosen. For almost two years their consciousnesses lingered in this world, trapped at the moment of their death. But because they had surrendered themselves to me once before, they couldn't escape my influence, even when my mind was in fragments. Unlike your little Realian girl, they have nothing left to bind them to this world, except for my will. They continue to exist by the grace of God alone. And now that I've regained my power, they'll do exactly as I command. Even if it means unleashing destruction on their own people, the descendants of the Immigrant Fleet and the blood of Abraxas." He paused, let the last words hang suspended like a death sentence. "Unless you grant me one small favor--and I'm sure you already know what that is."

Ziggy stared at the altar in silence. When he first recognized his wife and son in the transfigured creatures before him, he thought he would never speak again, but now his voice came back thin and defeated, the gasp of a dying man who had endured too long. "Tell me."

"You haven't figured it out yet?" The soft ingratiating tone turned sharply menacing. "It's true, you're all but worthless to me. In my exalted state, I hardly have any reason to concern myself with something as low and pathetic as you. But there's still one thing you have that I don't, not yet. I didn't realize it until I watched you end your life. And then I heard you declare it in your final breath, I saw it etched in your eyes as the life ebbed away from them. And I realized I had to possess it, even if I had to follow you to the ends of the universe. Even if I had to pursue you for a hundred years. Do you understand now, Jan Sauer?"

He pulled his eyes from the horror on the altar, back to the shrouded figure standing beneath it, and suddenly he knew. It was so obvious, so simple, he would have laughed if he knew how anymore, if he didn't already feel as though his heart had turned to ashes. "Death," he said. "You're still afraid of it, aren't you? Even as a Testament, you couldn't escape it. Even now, if this world really is headed for destruction, then you'll die with it, no matter how powerful you are. Even if you're a god. Is that all you've wanted from me all this time? The answer to your fear of death?" And then he really did laugh, a hollow, bitter sound that made his throat ache--not because he found any humor in the truth, but because it was so awful, so unbearable, that it had to be absurd.

"Yes," said Voyager. "That's what I wanted to understand. The fear of death is what saved me two years ago, but it also keeps me trapped here in the lower domain. You saw for yourself what happened to Dmitri Yuriev when he tried to ascend to the realm of U-DO. He's the one who told me that fear is the creative force that drives the fight for survival. But he saw the conquest of fear as an end in itself, rather than as a means to a greater purpose. He failed to conquer his fear before he reached the upper domain, and that led to his downfall. I don't intend to make that mistake." He moved closer, fixed his gaze on Ziggy. "That's why I require your assistance. You were the only one who ever refused the salvation I offered, and you chose death instead. Why is it that you alone, of all the souls I've encountered, could stare into the face of death without fear? It's not that you're fearless in any other way; in fact, you're something of a coward. But you have no interest in preserving your own life, except out of some sense of obligation to others. You see it as a kind of duty."

"That's correct." His composure had returned, but as Voyager had said, it wasn't because he was without fear. He was more afraid than he had ever been in his life, in this life or the one before it, but it didn't seem to matter anymore. "I've survived this long because I had no other choice. It wasn't because I had anything to live for. The only reason I'm still here is because it's my responsibility to protect this world. After all the pain and suffering you've caused, do you really think I'll ...."

"I advise you to consider it." He raised a hand to the altar in the manner of a prophet gesturing heavenward, but Ziggy couldn't bring himself to look again. "Because if you don't, I'll annihilate Second Miltia. Along with everything you've been fighting to defend."

The ashes settled inside him. He had known this was inevitable, although hadn't been willing to admit it until now: there was nothing he could do to stop Voyager. All he could do was make the same choice he had made for himself a hundred years ago--but now he would be deciding on behalf of innumerable living souls, not just his own. And the choice was between one form of death and another, between illusion and oblivion. Regardless of his actions here, MOMO and Juli and the others would perish when Voyager unleashed his power on the Immigrant Fleet and Second Miltia, and Ziggy could only hope to determine the manner of their demise, as if it made any difference. All he had to live for, the fleeting moments of happiness he had barely grasped as he neared the end of his life a second time--everything would be swept out of existence like flowers after a late frost.

"Even if I give you what you're asking for," he said, "you'll just destroy everything anyway. And then you'll rebuild the world as a prison to trap all the people you've killed. So the decision you're asking me to make ... isn't really a choice at all."

"At last, you understand my intention." Voyager smiled now; he already knew he had won, and he knew Ziggy realized it as well. "I'm afraid this isn't quite what you expected, was it? You're used to following orders, so you came here thinking you could just complete your assignment and go home to your well-earned rest. You didn't think you'd be called to make such a crucial decision, did you? But those who decide the fate of the world don't have the privilege to refuse that calling; it's ordained by the gods. And since I'm the closest thing the lower domain has to a god, I've decided to let that responsibility fall to you. Now, what will you decide? Will you abandon your world to its end, or will you permit me the authority to rule as I deserve?"

Ziggy willed himself to look back at the altar. Despite the mutations they had undergone, their faces seemed tranquil, peaceful, as if they were asleep. Even if they weren't human anymore, they didn't appear to be in any pain, or at least none that they were aware of. "I don't know," he said, without taking his eyes away from their unseeing ones. "Does it even matter? Either way, you'll ...." He shook his head. "I can't make that decision."

"Just as I expected of you, Jan Sauer." Voyager strode back in front of the altar, the black silhouette of his robe streaming as he raised himself into the air. "Presented with two outcomes you can't accept, you'll always choose the one that isn't offered. But I'm afraid you'll find there is no other way out this time, except to let the inevitable take its course. I'll leave you to say goodbye to your dearly beloved--if they'll even speak to you anymore."

Then he had gone, and a single transparent column replaced the altar, and the flickering red lights of the control room cut luminous patterns in the dark.

There was no way to shut down the system from here. Ziggy tried it as a last resort, without expecting it to work, and it didn't; the shell of glowing holographic readouts that encircled the central platform also marked the boundaries of a force field as solid and substantial as a wall, and he couldn't reach the controls, let alone figure out how to disable them.

And there was no other way to get through to the entity inside the column. Any conversation he held with them would be one-sided; he didn't know what he would have said anyway. Ninety years ago, fifty, even two years ago he might have known, but he had run through all the possibilities in his mind, exhausted all the outcomes, and now he had nothing left to say. If MOMO and the others were here now .... But he didn't allow himself to pursue the thought any further; they were beyond his reach, as he was beyond theirs. Perhaps it was best that he'd never had a chance to say goodbye properly. He wouldn't have to face them, to admit one last time that he had failed.

And he had only minutes left before the guards arrived. Time had passed differently--stopped or slowed--while he confronted Voyager in the other place, but now their signals had nearly reached the first security checkpoint.

There was only one thing left for him to do. He stepped out in front of the AEWS, between the column and the doorway, and waited. This time, no programmed survival instinct would override his intentions, no artificial reflexes throwing him out of the way at the last second. He would show Voyager what it meant to have no fear of death: a useless demonstration, because he didn't think Voyager would ever understand. In his own experience, Ziggy knew of only two ways to overcome that fear. One way was to lead a life so abject that death came as a long-awaited mercy.

The only other way was to die.

The first AMWS units burst through the shattered doorway and stood aside for the others to follow. Without hesitation, they leveled weapons at the modified AGWS and the smaller figure standing in front of it. He waited, unresisting. And the world turned red.

And when it passed, in a fraction of an instant, he remained standing, still facing the AMWS units as they buckled at the knees and collapsed, swept down by an invisible wave. The darkened passage gaped before him, unobstructed now except for the wrecked shells of machinery in front of the doorway.

_Get out, Jan._

He stood as if turned to stone. He couldn't move forward, and he was afraid to turn back.

_Well shut it down from inside. Just go while you still have time._

_Hurry, Dad. We can't ...._

Another flash of red, and alarm signals blared from the terminals behind him. The vast inhuman heartbeat stalled, shuddered through the floor.

"_Anomaly detected in core unit. Initiating containment procedures._"

He felt his own heart beating slow and strong against his will; the pulse rang inside his chest as some part of him fought in defiance for the life he had left. He found he could move again, and without looking back, he climbed into the AEWS and vaulted over the fallen AMWS units. Tremors shook the walls and floor of the passage as he made his way past the ruined security checkpoints and out to the corridor.

_Why?_

Sector numbers flashed by in descending order, alternating with the glare of red bars and the black of the walls. His vision had slipped out of focus again, and he realized it wasn't just due to exhaustion; when he brushed a hand against his face, the fingers of his glove came away damp and shining, and the knot of grief he had been fighting back since he left the control room suddenly came loose and he choked behind clenched teeth.

_Why do I have to go on living now, after all this?_

When he reached a section of the passage that ran close to the outer wall, he stopped and charged the AEWS' blade again, preparing to break through the hull as he had done earlier. The targeting interface wavered under the static and he wiped his eyes again.

"Why didn't you let me die?"

He didn't realize he had spoken aloud until he heard the answer.

"Because it's your duty to survive, Jan Sauer. You said it yourself."

He swung the AEWS around. "You ... knew they were going to do that?"

Voyager advanced, wading through red lights that swelled and lapped around the folds of his robe like a tide of blood. "You didn't really think I was going make the same mistake twice, did you? I just wanted to see it again, that defiant look in your eyes when you thought you were facing your own death. As if you had a secret you'd kept hidden from me all this time. And I'm not about to let you take that satisfaction with you to your grave."

Another shock jolted through the fortress. "_Containment failure in core unit. Switching to emergency lockdown mode._"

"It seems your plans aren't going entirely as you expected," Ziggy observed flatly. _Unless you planned it this way all along._ He couldn't tell whether Voyager was bluffing, stalling until he figured out a way to turn the situation to his advantage. But if he was, it wouldn't be the first time.

Behind Voyager, the lights in the passage blurred and darkened as if seen through smoke. "It doesn't matter now. My will has already begun to awaken in this world. The shadow network is merging with the physical domain. Even if you resist me, there's nothing you can do to stop this. And even if you die, I won't let you go. I'll pursue your soul to the depths of the collective unconscious. I'll bring you back to life a hundred times if that's what it takes. I'll trap you in your own eternal recurrence and make you relive your nightmares forever." But as he spoke his outline wavered, his face grew hazy and lost focus, like a malfunctioning hologram.

"You can't do it, can you?" said Ziggy, so quietly the AEWS' transmitters barely registered his voice. "You can't become a god until you abandon what you were. And as long as you hold on to your conflict with me, you'll never be able to let go of what made you human. That's why you've followed me for so long, isn't it? Because I'm the only thing left to stop you from obtaining absolute power."

"That's absurd." Even his voice sounded insubstantial now, transparent against the background noise and the rumble of disturbances elsewhere in the fortress. "I told you, I'm already too powerful for you to stop me."

Ziggy stared past him into the encroaching wave of darkness. "But you can't even control the power you have anymore."

"This is your last chance, Jan Sauer." Voyager extended the suggestion of a hand, the fingers unraveling into smoke and shadow. "My final offer of salvation."

_Whose salvation?_ thought Ziggy, and he realized he had been right. The insistence in Voyager's words, the desperation in his voice as it faded, the panic he tried to keep from his eyes as his face blurred into obscurity--it was his own salvation he sought now, his hand outstretched not in offering but as a plea for his existence.

Ziggy turned away, although there wasn't much left to turn away from. "You already know my answer," he said. Bracing himself against the recoil this time, he swung the AEWS around and smashed its blade into the wall. The explosion tore a rent in the hull, and the AEWS plunged through at the head of a boiling mass of shadows that pursued it blindly, mindlessly, closing in from the outside to meet the darkness and vertigo rising inside him, and the world tunneled away, and Ziggy let go and slipped down into nothingness.


	32. 32

**32**

The field around the Apocryphos reached to the edge of the Immigrant Fleet now, a planetoid of distortion swelling outward on its own momentum. The Federation ship raced ahead of the expanding tide, accelerated clear of it, and then the wave slowed and pulled back into itself, contracting toward the purple-black spiral of the fortress at its center.

Juli staggered to keep her footing as the ship banked too sharply for the artificial gravity to correct and the deck heaved beneath her feet. She caught her balance against a console and folded over, her heart beating a hollow in her chest.

From the monitors on the bridge, she watched as shadows poured out of the fortress like ink spilled in water, assuming transient and terrible shapes inside the sphere of distortion.

"The shadow network is building temporary structures in real space," one of the 100 series called out. "Its behavior and waveforms are becoming increasingly Gnosis-like."

Juli stared into the boiling, writhing mass on the screen. It gathered like the pressure building in her chest, and she didn't know whether her own voice would emerge as a scream or a sob, so she willed herself to stay silent. _This can't happen again. Not here. Not now._ The words became an unspoken mantra, as involuntary as breathing. _It can't happen, it won't. Not after everything we've done. Not while they're still out there. Not while my daughter and the man who said he'd spend the rest of his life with me are ...._

Beside her, Miyuki let out a high-pitched gasp. "Oh my god! What's it doing now?"

A dull red glow had started at the center of the mass, and as they watched it spread and kindled and grew outward, turning from deep red to bright red to orange to gold to white, spiraling out into petals of white-gold flame.

A white flash seared through the bridge. Miyuki screamed; Juli ducked away from the console, shielding her eyes, and then the monitors went blank.

* * *

The light faded.

MOMO sat in a cold sweat, in a trance, gripping the restraints of the co-pilot's seat, her operating system strained to its limits as it staggered to process the new data exploding across the AMN, the mingled interference of the virus and the shadow network. Out of the noise grew form and structure, self-assembling from particles and fragments, branching across imaginary space like veins outlined in light against the black of closed eyelids--connections growing out the disorder, diverting it, rewriting it into the lapses between pathways and the gaps in space.

"MOMO, can you hear me? MOMO!"

With effort, she diverted her attention from the network. "Sorry, I just--"

Doctus sighed, as much in exasperation as in relief. "I thought you might've shut down for a minute there. Can you tell what's going on?"

"Something's happening to the AMN," said MOMO. She could see it on her sensors when she closed her eyes, the new connections developing faster than she could trace them. "It looks as though the infrastructure is being reorganized at an incredible rate to handle all the data. Secondary axes are forming all over the matrix between real and imaginary space. The informational capacity of the network has already increased exponentially, and it's still expanding." Her heart raced. Was this partly her doing, the result of her work with the programming team? What had they done? What had _she_ done? This hadn't been part of the plan. "Someone or something is trying to prevent the AMN from shutting down. Who could be doing this?"

"Not _who_," said Doctus, staring at a cascade of screens in front of her. "Those pathways are developing organically. It's sooner than we expected, but it's beginning just as we predicted it would--the AMN itself is evolving."

"But I thought that wasn't supposed to happen yet!" MOMO shook her head in dismay. The second phase of development wasn't supposed to begin until they had restored connections to all the previous UMN sites. "This isn't right, it's too soon. Something must have triggered it prematurely."

"So it would seem. On the other hand, maybe it occurred at exactly the right time."

"What do you think is causing it?" She didn't want to ask, but she had to find out. She had to know.

Doctus hesitated, giving a kind of mental shrug. "Well, for starters, I suppose it could have been your cute little sabotage program," she said with more than a hint of scorn, confirming MOMO's worst fears immediately. "Or it could have been triggered when the Apocryphos formed a direct link between the two domains--a kind of chain reaction that led to spontaneous links across the entire network. It might even have had something to do with the shadow network itself, or with the program we wrote to patch the source code--the simple act of making the AMN aware of its counterpart. Or it may have been another set of factors we don't even know about. But in any case, it's out of our hands now."

MOMO stared back into the shifting field created by the spatial distortion, where the Apocryphos had vanished along with the gold-white rose of fire. Another movement began at the edges of the shadow--a shimmering like the scatter of light across water, dim and fragmentary at first, but as she watched, the light spread and took on increasingly complex forms and patterns, manifesting like the structures that had begun to develop spontaneously throughout virtual space. "Doctus, look over there! Is that the AMN too? What's happening to it now?"

"You're the observational Realian. Why don't you tell me?"

"I don't understand," said MOMO. "It's doing something to the shadow network, it's--" She searched for the right term: not fighting, not merging, but something like both at once, and neither. And it wasn't just happening around the Apocryphos; it was visible there because of the link between the real and imaginary domains, because the shadow network had begun to emerge at that point. But it was the same as what was happening, invisibly, across the entire reach of the AMN. "It's undergoing some kind of transformation," she said at last, settling on the only word she could find to describe it. "The shadow network is breaking down and reforming inside the AMN."

"Huh." Doctus sounded impressed. "Well, I certainly wasn't expecting that, but it makes sense."

"What do you mean?"

She was silent again for a while. "MOMO," she said at last, "you understand why it's dangerous to leave the operation of a system like the UMN or the AMN entirely within the collective unconscious, don't you?"

"I--I think so. I'm not sure I got all of it, but ...."

"Well, think of it this way. The collective unconscious is home to forces that have tremendous power over the fate of the universe and our own history. Existences like the Gnosis and U-DO, while not strictly limited to that domain, made contact with humans through the UMN, and there may be others like them--some we may not even have encountered yet, and others we've begun to understand only recently. The unconscious forces that reside in the imaginary domain represent the whole range of unrealized human potential; they may hold the key to our survival, but if we're not careful, they could also bring about our downfall. That's why there needs to be a ... well, some sort of conscious drive to balance out those forces, to use them in a constructive manner. The real-number superstructure we built during the first phase is part of that, but it's only the beginning. The AMN itself will have to become self-aware."

"Is that what we were building? A network that has its own will?" She tried to remember the early planning sessions of the AMN Development Committee and her own conversation with Juli before the meeting on the _Dämmerung_. "But what did Voyager have to do with all of this? Was he opposing it somehow?"

"There's something you need to understand about Voyager," said Doctus. "When he first appeared about a hundred years ago, he was our civilized society's worst nightmare. A criminal who knew our own technologies better than we did, and used them to carry out a reign of terror against us. It was like seeing our own faces laughing at us from an abyss. As a result of his actions, some of the people who lived during that time became disillusioned with humanity's blind faith in the UMN. They saw a darker side amid all the lights and dazzle, and they dedicated themselves to finding out the truth. Many of them, including someone you and I both know very well, suffered or died for what they found. Others were simply disbelieved, or ridiculed, or ignored." She raised her head, and the reflected lights of the control panel slid around the rims of her glasses like water droplets.

"As for Voyager," Doctus went on, "I think he saw himself as a prophet of his time, the messenger of a truth not many of us were ready to hear. He's always played on the aspects of human nature that our civilization has spent thousands of years trying to suppress: the lust for power and pleasure, the madness of religious fervor, the rejection of reason. That's what makes him so powerful, and so dangerous. I suppose he may have reappeared now as a kind of warning, to remind us that for all we've learned in the last century, there's still a lot we don't know about the universe. Or about ourselves, if it's worth making the distinction. _Nemo mortalium omnibus horis sapit._ Even those of us who'd like to think we've figured it all out, we don't have all the answers yet either. But if we just go forward blindly, we're no better than the followers of Ormus, like children dancing along to a tune we don't understand."

Doctus fell silent abruptly, and after a few minutes she resumed as if talking to herself. "I wonder if that's what he meant when he called himself the Executor of the Will. Maybe he thought he was carrying out one final task for his previous master, trying to challenge us one more time, to see if we were ready to determine our own fate."

MOMO watched the last glimmers of light along the shrinking edge of the spatial distortion. "Do you think we're ready now?"

But that must have been one of the answers Doctus didn't have, or else she hadn't heard MOMO's question. They were both quiet for a long time afterward, while the traffic on the local network trickled away like flood waters after a storm.

"And it seems we're back on-line," said Doctus with abrupt cheerfulness. "I'll broadcast a signal to the _Dämmerung_ and the Spec Ops unit. Someone's bound to come looking for us after the fighting stops."

MOMO kept gazing into the empty space where the Apocryphos had vanished. "What about ... Mommy and the others?" She had been about to say something else, and the name she hadn't spoken rang loud in the silence.

"You know," said Doctus, "not to change the subject or anything, but I bet we can track the AEWS' signal on the AMN from here."

"Oh! You're right!" She checked the radar screen, holding her breath until she found it--a solitary point of light drifting apart from the other signals. Her pulse leapt into her throat, making her voice waver. "I think he might be over there. Is it safe to go out in the open at our current damage levels?"

"Well, he's not too far off from us," said Doctus as they headed out past the Immigrant Fleet vessels hanging uncertainly around the place where the object of their pilgrimage had last appeared. MOMO watched on edge until the smaller craft appeared as a glimmer on the main screen.

"There!" she cried, but Doctus had already seen it and pushed forward, closing the remaining distance and catching the AEWS by an arm as it tumbled away from them.

Doctus switched on the intercom. "Are you okay in there?"

They both waited in silence, listening to the hiss of white noise.

"There must be something wrong with the connection," said MOMO. She didn't understand why she suddenly felt like crying again, but maybe it was from relief. "Are you sure it's on the right channel, Doctus? Maybe it got reset when--"

Doctus reached out slowly and turned off the intercom. "Let's just get him somewhere safe for now."

"But he's okay, right?" MOMO had just picked up a signal from inside the AEWS, so faint she hadn't noticed it at first. "He's alive, I can tell!"

"Can you really? Your sensors are better than mine, then." Doctus tried to act nonchalant, but MOMO thought she sounded relieved too. "Well, he's not going to be too happy when he finds out we had to rescue him after all. But we can worry about that after we get back to the _Dämmerung_."

"Wait a minute!" MOMO twisted around in her seat. "I'm detecting another signal. Something's behind us!"

Doctus swore and punched the controls. The _Astraea_ swerved in time to deflect the blast from the auto-tech's beam weapon, but the burden of carrying the AEWS made it difficult to maneuver. "That thing must have intercepted our distress signal."

"But why are they still attacking us? The Apocryphos is gone!"

"Apparently no one thought to inform the auto-techs." A moment later they both tensed as a second blast grazed the _Astraea_'s side, setting off a renewed cascade of warning screens. MOMO fired a few shots in return as they pulled back. "Damn it, we can't hold out like this," said Doctus. "How's he doing in there?"

MOMO panicked; she had lost track of Ziggy's life signs, and for a few seconds she was afraid he had been harmed in the attack. But his signal was still there, a slow quiet pulse buried under the other input from her observational equipment, and she let out her breath in a rush. "He's still okay."

"That's good, because--" Doctus didn't get to finish. The auto-tech fired a round of missiles, and she barely had time to steer the _Astraea_ out of the way before one of the missiles veered toward them and exploded in front of the cockpit.

MOMO ducked instinctively, shielding her face from the blast. Damage readings flooded her sensors, and at first she didn't notice when the auto-tech's signal flickered out. When she raised her head from her arms she saw only a few scraps of debris and machine parts drifting away from the place where the auto-tech had last stood.

Doctus folded her arms and leaned back in the pilot's seat, with an appreciative nod at the holographic panel that had just opened in front of her. "Good timing, ladies. Next time try showing up _before_ we get hit."

MOMO recognized the miniature figures on the screen and had to stop herself from crying out in relief.

"Hey, we did our best." Miyuki shrugged. "We got here as soon as we picked up your signal--well, after we met up with Captain Roman here. Did my AWESOME come in handy?"

"Doctus!" said Juli breathlessly, edging Miyuki out of the way. "Is MOMO still with you?" Juli seemed even more tired than she had the last time they had spoken, the way she appeared on certain mornings when MOMO knew she had been working in her office all night. MOMO had never been happier to see her.

"We're all here, Mommy. We're all safe." MOMO felt her eyes fill again, and she didn't know whether to cry or laugh. "Except ... Ziggy is ...."

"He's probably going to need a little _maintenance_," said Doctus sharply. "So if you needed an excuse to finish that conversation you were having, Dr. Mizrahi--"

"You know, I believe Jan has very strong opinions about eavesdropping," said Juli. MOMO didn't understand what they were talking about, but she recognized the tone of her mother's voice, a lightness that concealed menace like a silk cloth draped over knives. "But never mind," she went on, deftly withdrawing the knives from under the softness. "We'll drop our guard for a minute, so we should appear on your radar now. If you turn to your right, you'll probably see us."

The _Astraea_ turned, still carrying the AEWS, and the green-tinged blur of the ship resolved above the curve of Second Miltia's horizon.


	33. 33

**33**

Even amid the confusion and turmoil of the last twenty-four hours, Juli felt peaceful watching him sleep. His presence had a gravity that relaxed her, made her slow down in spite of the frantic pace of her thoughts--and they had been relentless until now, pursuing her all the way back to the _Dämmerung_.

She had returned here yesterday with Miyuki and the others, after they answered the distress call from the _Astraea_. Since then, Juli had stopped by the maintenance lab whenever she had a few minutes to herself--when she wasn't answering urgent calls from her contacts in the government or assessing the situation in Second Miltia--to monitor the progress on his repairs.

She went back to check on him one last time before the meeting began. Helmer had requested her presence during the negotiations, but she was nervous and still uncertain about attending. The charges against her had been suspended in light of the new evidence that had surfaced on the AMN last night, but it would take more than that to sway popular opinion, and from a publicity standpoint, today's meeting was a poor choice for her first official appearance after the incidents; it would only support her reputation as an Ormus sympathizer. And that wasn't the only reason she felt uncomfortable. Aside from the Second Miltian parliament, the only other representatives from the Federation Government would be military personnel, including Captain Roman--who had at least as many misgivings as Juli did, if not more.

She dismissed her concerns for the moment and sat down on a chair she had pulled up alongside the maintenance box. It was cold in the lab, and the hard gray lighting made it feel even colder. Shivering, she tugged at the front of her overcoat and moved the chair closer, resting her head next to his. The sound of his breathing made her feel calmer; she closed her eyes for a few seconds, and woke with a start as the door opened behind her.

"Oh--pardon me," said Doctus. "I didn't know you were in here. I'll leave you alone."

"It's all right." Juli sat up slowly; her head felt heavy. She checked the time on her connection gear and saw that she had only fallen asleep for a minute or two; she still had time before the meeting.

"How is he?"

Juli sighed. "Not much better."

Doctus walked over to the front of the maintenance unit and stood staring down at him, and Juli tried not to look up at her--at least, not in a way that she'd notice. Juli had spent the last few years living with two individuals who were constantly aware of her location as long as she stayed within their range, and it occurred to her that Doctus would have been able to trace her signal from across the hallway, if her observational faculties were anything like a Realian's. For someone who professed to uphold her own abstract vision of the truth, and expected others to do the same, Doctus told more white lies than any politician Juli had ever met. But Juli had told her share as well, and she supposed it was just a consequence of finding out, as those in positions of authority inevitably did, how far the truth could bend without breaking. The truth would only set you free if you knew how to turn it to your advantage.

Juli pulled up another screen on her connection gear and pretended to scroll back through an article she had read earlier. "By the way," she said, "I've just heard an interesting bit of news. It seems the report on Nov-OS and the DIRE that was uploaded to the AMN last night turns out not to have been published by an anonymous whistleblower within the company, as many of the news sources originally speculated. Now they're saying it was an outsider, probably an expert hacker who managed to get into the database somehow. But they're clueless as to who did it, or what their personal motives were."

Doctus' expression was unreadable as always, and any reaction she might have had remained hidden behind those lenses, which had always reminded Juli of an insect's eyes. "You're welcome."

Juli turned off the screen and slid the connection gear back into her pocket. When she looked again, Doctus still stood in the same place, and her expression hadn't changed, but her lips moved as if she were talking to herself.

"_Beyond this place of wrath and tears lies but the horror of the shade,_" said Doctus, at a volume just above a whisper, "_and yet the menace of the years finds and shall find me unafraid._"

Now Juli stared at her without bothering to hide her curiosity. "Was that a prayer?"

Doctus shook her head. "Just something I read once."

"Oh." She lowered her eyes, and her gaze settled on the still planes of his face. "Do you think he ...." But she stopped, because she didn't want to know the answer to the question she was about to ask. "I hate to leave him here, but I should be getting ready for the meeting now."

Doctus understood without her having to explain. "I'll watch him for a while, Dr. Mizrahi."

"Thank you." Juli got up and edged past her to the door, and for a moment both women stood facing each other at opposite ends of an awkward silence.

Recognition flashed on Doctus' face for a moment. "Oh, you think--" She actually laughed then, and shook her head. "Dear god, no. It was strictly professional, you understand. I never-- Well, you know how these things are."

"Yes, I .... Right, of course. I'll be going now." She exited as gracefully as she could, then stood staring at the door after it had closed behind her. "Unbelievable," she muttered, shaking her head, as she made her way to the elevator.

When she stepped out of the elevator on the upper level, she found MOMO and Alby waiting in the hallway.

"Still the same," said Juli, answering MOMO's question before she had a chance to ask.

"I was just on my way down to visit him," said MOMO. Her gaze wandered farther down the hall, where Alby had picked up a trail of some sort and trotted off to investigate. "I thought maybe it would make him feel better if ... I mean, I thought maybe Alby and I could keep him company. Are you going to the meeting now?"

"Soon. Where's Captain Roman?"

"Taking a break, I think. She went somewhere with Miyuki." MOMO looked back at her, and Juli could practically read the questions that flashed across her face. They were the same questions Juli didn't dare ask herself, the nameless concerns she was afraid to put into words, in case that made them real. They swarmed below the surface of her thoughts like an army of Gnosis, waiting to break through into reality.

"MOMO." Juli spoke gently, but with an edge that compelled MOMO's attention. "I want you to know that no matter what happens after today, it won't affect our relationship. That is, it won't have any bearing on my personal arrangement with you. I'll always ...." She blinked, swallowed; this was harder than she had expected, and the words came out sounding hollow. "You're my daughter, MOMO. And nothing that happens will ever change that. So I don't want you to worry. Even if ...."

MOMO squeezed her eyes shut and nodded, her face strained with the effort of holding back tears. "I don't want him to die."

The words went through Juli's heart like a cold spike, taking away her breath. It was the first time she had allowed herself to admit that possibility, though it had hovered at the back of her mind since yesterday. She had known for a long time that she would have to accept it eventually; she just didn't think she would have to accept it so soon.

"But ... thank you." MOMO looked up again, and her eyes were damp and reddened in the harsh light of the corridor. She wiped her face on her sleeve and made a strained attempt at smiling. "Thanks, Mom." The unfamiliar term caught Juli off guard; MOMO had never called her that before, but it seemed appropriate somehow.

Juli took a hesitant step forward. This time no one stood behind her in silent reassurance, one arm outstretched to support her if she fell back--but it had been a long time since she had needed to rely on him for that, she realized. She used to wonder which of the three of them had been the catalyst that brought them all together, but now she realized they had brought each other together, moving closer one hesitant uncertain step at a time, pretending to be a family until they got it right. Even in his absence, the space between Juli and MOMO was itself a kind of presence, an invisible connection, and the universe was full of invisible connections, humming through the air and strung out across the emptiness of space and the vastness of time.

She tried to smile back, but felt tears gathering in her eyes instead. They stood facing each other for a long moment, caught in the balance between grief and joy; and then they separated and went on their ways.

* * *

MOMO reached the door and hesitated. She had taken the hallway at a run, with Alby trotting after her, as soon as she stepped off the elevator, but now she found herself holding back, staring at the closed door to the lab as if she had found a solid wall in its place. She hadn't seen Ziggy since yesterday, when they returned to the _Dämmerung_. It had required a team of Vector employees to pry him out of the damaged cockpit of the AEWS and transport him to the emergency maintenance lab in this sector; if he had been conscious at the time, he probably would have been embarrassed.

Juli had called MOMO every few hours with updates on his recovery. MOMO would have gone herself, but she was busy meeting with the AMN Division and the Administrative Bureau, the latter via hologram from Fifth Jerusalem. Under MOMO's direction, the two agencies had spent the last twenty-four hours analyzing the changes to the AMN and arguing over what to do about it, and they had only just adjourned within the last hour.

Beside her Alby gave an impatient bark and pawed at the edge of the door. "All right," she said to no one in particular, and keyed in the access code. As the door slid aside to admit the cold watered-down light from within, a gray figure stepped away from one of the terminals. MOMO jumped in alarm; she hadn't been paying attention to her sensors and wasn't expecting to find anyone else in the room.

"Oh, um ... hi, Doctus." MOMO edged back warily. Since yesterday they had hardly spoken to each other, although Doctus had made a brief appearance before the AMN Division to explain the phenomenon in the same terms she had used to explain it to MOMO. Her interactions with MOMO had been coldly polite and professional, and MOMO thought Doctus might still be upset with her for trying to shut down the AMN, even though the plan had worked in their favor. The breakdown in communications had affected both the Federation military and the Immigrant Fleet during the battle in Second Miltian space, interfering with combat operations and preventing the skirmishes that had already broken out from engulfing the entire system. And the experts in Vector and the government had only begun to understand the changes that had swept across the network at its most fundamental level, transforming the structure itself. The threat to its existence had apparently triggered some kind of survival instinct that had forced it to evolve, and it was still evolving now, a full day after the changes began.

"Hi yourself," said Doctus, without overt malice, and with a barely concealed glance at the figure on the bed. "Don't worry, your mother knows I'm here. I suppose you'll be wanting some time alone?"

MOMO nodded. "If you don't mind," she said, more sharply than she had intended; she felt a defensive reflex coiling back in her throat, preparing to lash out, and it frightened her to realize she had that much defiance stored up inside. She was learning all kinds of things she hadn't known about herself.

"Of course." Doctus' expression softened, and she smiled--with something approaching admiration, MOMO thought, although she had never been able to intuit Doctus' emotions the way she could with Ziggy. Still, MOMO felt relieved, as if they had just reached an unspoken accord. Doctus glided past her, boot heels clicking sharply as she crossed the floor. "I'll wait outside. Take all the time you need."

When the door had closed behind her, Alby scampered over to the chair and took up his accustomed post at its base, the way he did at home. But MOMO stayed in front of the doorway, feeling as though she had frozen up again. From here she could see the back of the chair, the curve of an arm, the dull shine of his prosthetic hand on the armrest. She told herself it was no different from any other time she had visited him during his maintenance, that she was just going to keep him company for a while as she always did, but she knew that wasn't true. That wasn't why she was here. Not this time.

"Ziggy, I ... I came to say goodbye to you." Her words sounded small and lost under the noise of the machines that monitored his sleep. She walked over and stood next to the maintenance box, hesitantly taking his right hand in both of hers. It felt too light, too still, the gloved fingers stiff and cold. "I know you're tired, and I know you've been waiting for a long time, so it's okay if ...."

Her voice faltered, and suddenly she wanted to tell him everything while he was still here, before it was too late. "A lot of things have been happening since the last time you were awake," she said, stumbling over the words in her rush. "Mommy ... I mean, my mother says if the negotiations go well, there's a chance we might reopen the sealed column after all. The AMN Division's already talking about building exploratory columns along the route to Lost Jerusalem once it's reopened, and, and so that means, maybe we'll ...." She gripped his hand tighter, not daring to say the rest aloud. _Maybe we'll see them again soon._

He lay still, his head inclined at an uncomfortable-looking angle, his shoulders rising and falling as he breathed.

"But I don't want you to worry about us," MOMO went on. "Mom and I are safe now, and you don't have to worry about protecting us anymore. You already ...." She blinked and looked away. She didn't know what he had done inside the Apocryphos, and she might never have a chance to ask him, but somehow she knew his mission had succeeded; they wouldn't be here now if it hadn't. "So you don't have to keep fighting. You can go to sleep, and ...."

This time, when her voice trailed off, she couldn't find it again. There was too much left to say, and she didn't know how to say it all at once. She wanted to tell him that growing up wasn't at all what she had thought it would be, and despite Juli's reassurance, she still didn't know whether she had it all wrong. She used to believe that the confidence she saw in her mother and her friends came from knowing all the answers, that someday she would know the answers too and the world wouldn't seem so huge and complicated and frightening anymore. But the more she learned about the world, the more uncertain it became; and the more she understood the consequences of her actions, the harder it was to act. She had tried to shut down the AMN because she thought it was the right thing to do, but she wasn't proud of what she had done. Her decision had caused as many complications as it had resolved.

But even in the midst of her uncertainty, in spite of everything that had changed in the last three years, he had remained the same, a constant among variables. Even if he couldn't always save her, even if she had to learn to fight for herself, he had been there to watch over her, and knowing that had made her feel safe. She wanted to tell him, but she couldn't find the words.

Instead she held on to his hand, hoping she wouldn't have to let go just yet. She didn't think she would ever stop wanting someone to watch over her.

* * *

In the Second Division staff room, Lapis Roman stared into her cup of coffee. She had barely touched it since she sat down, and it was cold now; the thought of swallowing anything made her stomach turn over.

The collapse of the Apocryphos, along with the partial success of the mutiny led by the Julian Sect, had brought the fighting between the Federation forces and the Immigrant Fleet nearly to a standstill. As of the last official report, a few of the more stubborn units were still shooting at each other, but the rest had stopped around the time the AMN went berserk.

Later, when some of the Federation troops boarded the Immigrant Fleet ships to investigate, they had found the officers collapsed at their posts, dead or dying of trauma related to brainjacking, and the rest--civilians and lower-ranking soldiers--sequestered in the inner holds, treating the wounded and holding vigils in prayer. Most of them seemed to have no more interest in fighting, even in the presence of Federation soldiers; when questioned they made reference to "a sign in the heavens" that had heralded some sort of miracle, and even Roman had to admit it seemed as valid an explanation for the recent phenomena as any other explanation offered by either side. The only units still fighting back against the Federation forces were those in which the group consensus had tipped the other way and sent the rank and file climbing over their fallen superiors to continue the assault, but they were outnumbered and losing morale.

And when the traffic on the network cleared and the lines of communication had reopened, a group of Inquisitors from the Julian Sect had sent a message to the Second Miltian government on behalf of the Patriarch, requesting a truce. Roman would be meeting with them soon, accompanying Helmer and Dr. Mizrahi and some higher-ranking officials in the Federation military--ostensibly to negotiate a cease-fire, although Helmer had invited her along to keep one eye on the Inquisitors, whom he didn't trust, and the other on certain of the military brass, whom he trusted even less. In return, Helmer had promised to make sure her request for a few weeks' leave of absence got approved with priority.

She reached for the coffee cup again; maybe she would feel better if she actually managed to drink some. She still hadn't recovered from the stress and trauma of the last twenty-four hours--first the Apocryphos mission and the deaths of her comrades, and then the AMN phenomenon, which no one but MOMO and a few other members of the development committee seemed to understand. Roman still wasn't sure she understood it herself; either the two networks had merged, or one had swallowed the other and transformed into something else entirely, or there was some other explanation that was even more complicated, and no one knew exactly how to handle the situation yet. In the meantime, normal communications on the network had resumed as if the infrastructure remained fundamentally unaltered, although the AMN Administrative Bureau had advised users to proceed with caution until the changes had been fully investigated.

At the table beside her, Miyuki had launched into an enthusiastic discussion of her next project, but Roman was too distracted to listen for more than a few seconds at a time. "The AWESOME performed way better than I expected," Miyuki was saying now, "so I bet I can adapt it for all kinds of military and commercial uses. But, you know ... I kind of want my next big invention to be something different. Something that makes things better for a change, instead of blowing them up. So I had this idea for a way to build hyperspace columns more efficiently. I'm going to present it to the AMN Division once things settle down. I bet it will really come in useful when we open up the sealed column."

Roman saw Juli walk in from across the room, and checked the time. Excusing herself from the table, she got up and walked to the door. Even after the nanosurgery, her leg still ached where the shot had grazed her ankle, but she managed to disguise the slight limp, and it hardly bothered her. At least she had escaped alive; the rest of her unit hadn't been so fortunate, and she'd had nightmares about the thing in the corridor last night, in the few hours she managed to sleep. She shuddered to remember it now.

"Are you ready?" said Juli. She looked both tired and restless, the same way Roman felt.

Roman nodded and followed her out into the hallway. "Although I hardly need to tell you I don't have a very good feeling about this."

"I know." Juli clasped her hands together and dropped her gaze to the side as they walked. "Helmer seems to think the Julian Sect will ask for the Federation Government to recognize them as a sovereign state--a theocracy independent from the Federation. We could be setting ourselves up for another Miltia Conflict."

"That's what I was afraid of," said Roman. "It looks like we're about to repeat history again."

"No." Juli raised her head sharply. "We don't have to let that happen. We can do something about it this time."

"Dr. Mizrahi, with all due respect, you and I aren't exactly in a position to determine--"

"I know, but ...." They walked by a window in the hallway and Juli looked out, catching a momentary glimpse of the stars as they passed. "Things aren't the same as they used to be. We're not the same. This isn't the same world from seventeen years ago, or a hundred years ago. And speaking as a scientist, I don't know of any universal law that states we have to go on making the same mistakes forever. Maybe we did in the past, but that doesn't mean it's inevitable. Besides ... we might even stand to learn something from Ormus. After all, we do have one goal in common."

"You mean Lost Jerusalem?" Roman stared at her, wondering whether the rumors about Juli's ties to Ormus held some truth after all.

"Yes, exactly." Juli went on as if she hadn't noticed her reaction. "As misguided as some of their beliefs were, they never gave up searching for their promised land. I think we could learn from that too." They passed another window; this time, deep in thought, she didn't look up. "My late husband used to say that relationships between people, between one generation and the next, were like waves. I think we make mistakes so we can learn from them, and so our children can learn from us. We pass that learning on to the generations after us, and they pass on their learning, and over time they accumulate, so that even the smallest change can have an effect on the entire system. We have the ability to change our destiny by changing ourselves. And that, I think, may be our greatest strength right now."

Roman was silent as they approached the internal rail station where the shuttle awaited. The meeting had been scheduled to take place elsewhere on the _Dämmerung_, in the room the former CEO had used for private meetings with his closest advisers. Helmer had wanted to hold the negotiations on neutral territory, instead of on Second Miltia or in one of the Immigrant Fleet colonies, as a gesture of mutual goodwill, and the joint leaders of Scientia and Vector had volunteered the _Dämmerung_ as the single largest politically neutral entity in the Federation.

"Your husband was an interesting person," Roman said finally. "And I mean that with all due respect. I hope he was right."

"I hope so too," said Juli. She climbed into the shuttle, and Roman got in after her, and they prepared to depart.


	34. 34

**34**

The world had turned back a hundred years in an instant, the walls of the cathedral reassembling out of ruin, the gray half-light retreating before a directionless whiteness that seared away shadows and cast every angle and surface in the same stark contrast.

He had returned to this place--for the first time? the second? the hundredth? or perhaps he had never left, and a part of him had remained trapped here forever--without the sense of urgency that had set his mind and heart racing, in a desperation to forestall what he could never prevent. There was nothing left to prevent now. It was over before he arrived.

They waited before the altar, where he had seen them alive for the last time. His steps echoed softly as he approached from the aisle, but they didn't turn around until he reached them.

"I've been here before," he said with sudden recognition, remembering this place not for what it resembled--the stage of his recurring nightmare--but for what it was. "I came here a long time ago, when I ...." His words trailed away. There was no wall behind the altar, only an opening onto a white shore edged by a gray line of water fading back into whiteness.

And he felt drawn to that horizon, drawn to whatever waited beyond it, felt his presence spread thin as the boundaries of his awareness dissolved. Long ago he had stood here, on the line between existence and nothingness, and had found something close to peace, a moment before he was dragged back from the edge and woke up in a dull cold room in a body he no longer recognized. Without realizing it, he had spent the last hundred years of his life trying to find that peace again, the calm he had first experienced on the brink of nonexistence.

"We were here once before, too." The sound of Sharon's voice recalled him from the edge, grounded him, reminded him he was still here, if here was anywhere anymore. "That boy, the young man who was with you, he led us here after we escaped the first time."

_That boy_--he had a momentary glimpse of a shared memory, blue-green eyes and a melancholic smile, a gentle voice whispering comfort. _I can take you back to where it ended, but you'll have to go on alone. And you'll have to let go if you want to leave this moment._

"Why didn't you leave then?" he said.

"Something else ... kept us here." Sharon lowered her eyes, and Joaquin stared up at Jan with a mixture of guilt and remorse and longing and a stab of accusation that cut sharper than any of Voyager's words ever had.

Suddenly Jan understood, and he looked away so he wouldn't have to read the truth on his son's face anymore. "So it wasn't just Voyager. You still could have gone if you wanted to. But you waited." And Voyager had found them waiting, two more scattered fragments of his consciousness to be gathered back into himself.

"We didn't want to leave without you, Dad. You looked so sad and tired, like you just wanted everything to be over."

"I kept you here," Jan said coldly, too empty for dismay. "All of this is my fault. If I had been stronger, if I had prevented him, before--"

"Jan, stop it." Sharon kept her head bowed, her hair--what color had it been? he couldn't remember, and everything in this world looked gray--falling across her face. "Stop hurting yourself like that. This was our decision. We stayed because we wanted to see you again, even if it meant we'd have to go back to him."

"I'm sorry." He didn't know whether he was apologizing for blaming himself, or because he knew he deserved the blame, because he'd failed them.

While they stood here the waves had risen and the cathedral walls had faded or crumbled into sand; now only the altar remained, worn down and eroded, a half-sunken boulder at the water's edge. Sharon walked past it, staring across the waves to the unknown place.

"And ... when you shut down the weapon ...." He stopped when he saw her shudder, saw his son recoil from the memory of that place, of what they had become.

"That was our decision too," said Sharon. "Voyager had nothing to do with it. But if you hadn't been there, we might've ...."

He stared at the ground, at the crumbled fragments of rock around the base of the altar.

"Dad. It's okay. He's gone now, right? So we can all go home."

Jan looked up, into his son's eyes--gray like everything else in this world, but he could almost remember another color--and realized he no longer knew where home was. He didn't even know where he was, or where he belonged. "Could I talk to your mother alone for a minute?"

"Sure, Dad. I'll wait right here." Joaquin leaned against the sunken altar, pressing his palm to the rough stone where the Zohar-shaped outline was barely visible, its edges worn to curves.

"Sharon."

Without a word in reply, and without looking back at him, she set off down the line of the beach, along the scalloped hem of the waves, and he followed. When they stopped and he glanced in the direction they had come from, the boulder stood small and gray in the distance, amid the rubble of stone foundations that might have formed part of a building once, their outline barely hinting at its vastness. He moved closer to her side, and some unseen thread pulled his gaze back out to the horizon and stranded him there, until he forgot the difference between the breeze off the water and his own breath, between his outstretched hand and the sky.

"You love them, don't you?"

He couldn't answer. The words reached him, but he lost their meaning somewhere in the distance between the white and the gray.

"Jan."

He turned back. It was getting more difficult to recall himself; if he drifted off again, he might not return at all.

"You love them," she said. "The ones I saw with you the first time we escaped. The little girl, and the others. You're alive now because of them; they're the reason why you have to go on living. That's why we stopped you when you tried ...." Her words cut off abruptly. She lifted her face to the horizon, and he sensed that she was also being drawn toward the edge, toward the place where all distinction was lost. "It's strange," she said after a few minutes. "I used to think that if I ever saw you again, you wouldn't have changed, no matter how much time had passed, and in a lot of ways, you really haven't. But there was also a part of me that hoped I'd never have the chance to find out. After I realized what we'd done to you ...."

"Sharon, that wasn't your fault."

"Maybe it was and maybe it wasn't. I just want you to know you're not the only one who wanted to forget everything."

For a long moment the only sound came from the waves.

Then she said, "He promised us two things, the second time. The chance to see you again, and the chance to forget what had happened to keep us apart. That's why his offer was so hard to resist, even after we'd been trapped in his mind once before. But it wasn't the same as the first time; we couldn't go back to not knowing. I couldn't forget what I had done, or how I'd hurt you. And he used that pain against us--against you, and everything. Haven't you ever felt as if you had enough pain and grief inside you to destroy the world, if only you could release it somehow?"

At first he didn't think he had ever felt that way, but he realized that was because he had never wanted to inflict his pain on the world; instead he had turned it inward, crushed it down inside himself and hoped for his own destruction.

She stood with her back to him now. He reached toward her, but she pulled away as soon as his fingertips brushed her arm. "No. Don't. Not now." She wrapped herself in her arms as if his touch had chilled her. "Please don't make this any harder for me, or yourself."

He curled his hands at his sides. "What should I do?" He wasn't just being drawn toward the horizon now; something else was holding him back, a faint insistent tug in the opposite direction. Maybe that was all that had kept him from disintegrating completely when he stared out across the waves. Perhaps it was the same as what had compelled Sharon and Joaquin to wait for him, when they should have gone ahead on their own.

"I can't decide for you," she said. "But I think you already know what you want." When she turned from the shoreline it seemed as though the sea was still reflected in her eyes; they were the same shade of gray.

And he did know; he had known since he arrived here, but until she reminded him, he hadn't been able to acknowledge it as such. "What about you and Joaquin?"

"Don't worry about us. We'll be fine, where we're going. I don't know exactly what will happen after that, but if we can, we'll try to wait for you there."

"Thank you." The words sounded clumsy and inadequate, but he didn't know what else to say.

They turned back toward the sinking outline of the cathedral, the last stones of the foundation level with the sand, the altar a featureless outcrop surrounded by water. Joaquin perched atop it, swinging his legs over the edge, and he scrambled down to the sand as they approached.

"You're leaving again, aren't you?" He frowned at Jan. "I can tell. You're going to go away and forget about us, just like you did last time."

Behind Jan, Sharon drew a sharp breath. "Joaquin, that isn't--"

"It's all right, Sharon." Jan knelt in front of Joaquin. "Listen, I .... I can't go with you and your mother just yet. I still have work to do where I came from."

"I know, Dad." Joaquin held his gaze patiently, the accusation gone from his face now, softened by a need for reassurance. It would be easy to make up answers, to tell him they would meet again someday, in another lifetime, or in a place and time beyond the boundaries of this world. But Jan didn't know if any of that was true. All he could remember was what MOMO and the others had learned about the imaginary domain two years ago, when they started building the AMN, that nothing was ever really lost, and even the moments he had tried to forget, the memories he had tried to suppress, had resurfaced because they were too important to let go.

He gripped Joaquin's shoulder. "I'm not sure if I'll get to see you again," he said, "but I have an assignment for you."

"An assignment?" Joaquin's eyes brightened, and for a moment Jan thought he remembered what color they were. "Is it important?"

"Very important. Now listen--I'm not sure what it's going to be like where you're going, but as long as you're still together, I want you to look out for your mother, just like she's always looking out for you. Protect each other. That's important, all right? Can you do that for me?"

Joaquin tried to make his face look serious, but he couldn't quite manage it. He saluted, beaming. "Yes, sir, Captain!"

Jan stood and touched the side of his own forehead. "You're the captain now, Joaquin. I leave you in charge." He turned back toward Sharon. The breeze loosened strands from her hair and trailed them across her face, and he had to fight the impulse to reach over and brush them away, because he was afraid of what might happen if he touched her again, and he knew she was afraid too. Seeing her now, he remembered why he had loved her and why, later, he had wanted to forget her--the reasons for both were the same.

"I guess this is it, then," she said.

"I guess so."

"I'll never forget you."

He was about to say he wouldn't either, but he realized he didn't have to, that somehow she knew already, and that was enough.

After they had gone, he stood on the beach and watched the gray waves rise above the ruins, closing over the altar stone and swallowing it down into the shadows, until nothing remained of the place that had haunted his memories for the last hundred years. And he turned from the white horizon and started toward home.

(end)


End file.
